In this paper, we consider a flexible method for designing n-entities communication protocols and services. The proposed technique considers alternative and parallel composition of n service specifications and n protocol specifications, where n 2. The specifications are specified in Basic LOTOS which is a Formal Description Technique (FDT). We use the weak bisimulation equivalence () to represent the correctness properties between the service specification and the protocol specification.

LOTOS parallel operator, which is a binary operator, is used to combine processes in order to express their concurrency. Unlike other LOTOS operators, various possibilities exist when combining processes by the parallel operator. If two processes are selected randomly for combining, the size of the composite intermediate process after combining may be large. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for selecting two processes out of three or more processes so that the size of the intermediate process is the smallest when combined by the parallel operator. Smaller size of an intermediate process means it takes less memory space which is very important in designing verification tools for systems or communication protocols specified in LOTOS.

Users of computer communication systems and their requirements are rapidly increasing and changing. It is desirable to have a development method which helps to make small changes in a design of a system to obtain another system which satisfies new requirement changes. We propose a flexible synthesis method which adopts designers' requirement changes in formal protocol specifications designed in LOTOS.

In communication protocols, the behaviour of a protocol entity is related to the behaviour of another protocol entity as they communicate under sets of communication rules (protocols). Thus, it is desirable to concentrate on the design of one protocol entity and generate the corresponding protocol entity automatically. Furthermore, it is desirable that the protocol is formal, precise and unambiguous that is, it is described using FDTs (Formal Description Techniques). In this paper, we propose a protocol synthesis algorithm in which, from a LOTOS specification of a single given entity, LOTOS specification of the corresponding peer entity is generated automatically. Unlike previous works, where FSMs (Finite State Machines) were used to synthesize protocols, we use LOTOS, which is one of FDTs developed by ISO, in our proposed synthesis algorithm. We prove that the generated protocol is logical errors free, collectively represented as deadlock free, if the given entity is in certain forms which are natural in the context of connunication protocols.

Users of computer communication systems and their requirements are rapidly increasing and changing. In order to deal such a situation a rapid development method of communication systems is necessary. One of the such development methods is to change an existing specification of the system to obtain the desired specification of the system. However, a very little work has been done to support making changes in formal specifications. In this paper, we propose a mechanism for making changes in formal protocol specifications by adding protocol functions in an existing protocol specification.

One of the important techniques in communication system design is the composition of service and protocol specifications. In this paper, we have presented a new approach to the composition technique based on the weak bisimulation concept. The main objective is to combine service specifications and protocol specifications individually and simultaneously. The composition technique can maintain the equivalence between the composed service and protocol specifications. LOTOS language terms are utilized to describe the communication specifications. The application on the asynchronous model is presented. Moreover, a support system of the composition technique is developed and presented in this paper.

The complexity of designing communication protocols has lead researchers to develop various techniques for designing and verifying protocols. One of the most important techniques is a compositional technique. Using a compositional technique, a large and complex protocol is designed and verified by composing small and simple protocols which are easy to handle, design and verify. Unlike the other compositional approaches, we propose compositional techniques for simultaneously composing service specifications and protocol specifications based on Formal Description Techniques (FDTs) called LOTOS. The proposed techniques consider alternative, sequential, interrupt and parallel composition of service specifications and protocol specifications. The composite service specification and the composite protocol specification preserve the original behaviour and the correctness properties of individual service specifications and protocol specifications. We use the weak bisimulation equivalence (), to represent the correctness properties between the service specification and the protocol specification. When a protocol specification is weak bisimulation equivalent to a service specification, the protocol satisfies all the logical properties of a communication protocol as well as provides the services that are specified in the service specification.