Using ESTEREL for building synchronization mechanisms in multimedia systems

This paper shows how the formal specification language ESTEREL may be efficiently used in the development of multimedia systems. We cover the specification and validation of a lip-synchronization mechanism. Modeling of this mechanism lends to a relative simple specification which confirms the simplification of reasoning about real-time systems related to the synchrony hypothesis. Several results obtained by simulation allowed a performance evaluation of the mechanism under different quality of service requirements.