Generating extended state transitions from structured specifications for process control systems

The paper describes a method for providing improved prototyping capabilities in a process control system emulation tool. The tool, the NIST Hierarchical Control System Emulator, allows concurrent execution of modules emulating both physical processes and decision processes. The concurrent modules are specified as extended finite state machines. The paper describes the emulation tool and presents a simple method for transforming code, written with structured control constructs, into an extended state machine representation usable on the Emulator, providing the capability of rapid prototyping of designs. The paper also discusses advantages and disadvantages of this approach against direct use of state tables for specifying processes on the Emulator