A synchronous paradigm for modeling stable reactive systems

This paper describes a modeling technique for single-agent reactive systems, that is influenced by the modeling paradigm of Parnas as well as by the synchronous paradigms of LUSTRE and ESTEREL. In this paradigm, single-agent reactive systems are modeled in a universe having a discrete clock. This discretization of time greatly reduces the temporal complexity of the model. We believe that the advantage of this reduction in temporal complexity is that the resulting model is in many ways better suited to automated software construction and analysis techniques (e.g., deductive synthesis, transformation, and verification) than models that are based on continuous representations of time.