Modular Communication Subsystem Implementation Using A Synchronous Approach

The lack of flexibility and performance of current communication subsystems has led researchers to look for new protocol architectures. A new design philosophy, flexible and efficient, referred to in the literature as "function-based communication model" is emerging and seems to be very promising. It consists of designing application-tailored communication subsystems adapted to the specific requirements of a given application. The flexibility of such a solution leads to very efficient implementations integrating only required functionalities.

In this paper, we propose a flexible model which uses a synchronous language to synthesize communication subsystems from functional building blocks. We provethe feasibility of our approach by implementing a data transfer protocol using Esterel, a synchronous language. Communication subsystem specifications in our model are very modular; they are composed of parallel modules, implementing the different functionalities of the communication subsystem, which synchronize and communicate using signals. The Esterel compiler generates from this parallel specification a sequential automaton by resolving resource conflicts. The design flexibility of our approach is demonstrated; modules are selected according the application requirements and compiled to generate an integrated implementation.