A hybrid formal description method based on FSM, CSP and ADT for communication protocol

Since communication protocol deals with complex issues related to distribution such as communication, concurrency and synchronization, their development needs to be traced by using sophisticated formal description methods. This paper presents a new hybrid formal method for communication protocol specification. In this method, finite state machine (FSM), communication sequential process (CSP) and abstract data type (ADT) are mixed and the best features of these approaches are offered. In this paper, the main formal description techniques (FDT) for protocol engineering are briefly introduced and a hybrid formal description method based on the FSM. CSP and ADT for comrnunication protocol is described. Finally, this paper presents the formal specification of an example protocol for LAN by using the proposed hybrid formal method. The results of studies show that the — hybrid formal description method for communication protocol is an available and effective approach.