Component Interfaces with Loosely Synchronous Communication

Abstract

Interface automata have been introduced as a way to advance from value and domain descriptions of type systems to temporal interface descriptions. The original introduction of interface automata used a notion of buffered communication with infinite buffer size. This communication model is suitable to abstract the behaviour of many computing aspects with asynchronous communication between components. In this paper we present Loosely Synchronous Interface Automata (LSIA) to describe interfaces of components with loosely synchronised communication. Loosely synchronised communication facilitates a blocking semantics of communication for both sender and receiver. With loosely synchronisation it is possible to describe systems where a precise order of events is necessary. For example, cyber-physical systems often include control tasks where the exact order of events is necessary for a safe operation. With LSIAs it is possible to check compatibility of interface models including safety-relevant properties like lifeness. In this paper we describe the composition of LSIAs and show examples.