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Modular Communication Subsystem Implementation using a Synchronous Approach

Claude Castelluccia and Walid Dabbous
INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles
BP-93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, FRANCE
e-mail: Firstname.Lastname@inria.fr

Abstract

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.

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