Protocol verification using discrete-event systems

It can be shown that the problem of reliable transmission of data over an unreliable communication channel can be restated as a decentralized control problem of discrete-event systems. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions to such decentralized supervisory control problems have been found. These conditions are used to verify the correctness of a protocol for the data transmission problem. In particular, it is demonstrated that the authors' method provides a systematic check on whether the protocol satisfies the required safety property, as opposed to relying on finding, ad hoc, circumstances under which the protocol fails.<>