A computer-aided protocol design by production systems approach

A computer-aided protocol design system based on the OPS5 production system approach is proposed. Communication rules (state transitions) are specified as triples of object-attribute-value and the modeling of state transitions is specified by production rules. An incremental validation algorithm to facilitate protocol design is also presented. Based on a globally shared dataspace (working memory) in which different types and levels of information are all represented in a uniform structure, the OPS5 production system integrates both rule-based and procedure-based computations. Using this characteristic, the machine-dependent part can be abstractly specified through external procedure calls, the details of which can be coded in a procedure language until the implementation phase. Since computations in OPS5 are based on pattern matching, all of the attributes of elements that are in production rules or in external procedure calls can act as data templates for generic data types. This capability enhances the generic specification that allows different realizations for various implementation environments