A formal approach to the desin and implementation of network communication protocol

Abstract

This paper presents a formal model using the context-free grammar (CFG) for the design and implementation of communication protocols. It is similar to the Backus-Naur Form that has been used to define the syntax of programming languages. The transmission grammar (TG) is used to define the protocol for the communication entities of a computer network. For the hierarchical protocol design, the communication entity of each level is decomposed into more detailed inner-layered components and/or logically independent parts. The local approach is first used to define the TG for each of the decomposed components and logical parts. The shuffle and substitution operations are then applied to integrate the TGs of the logical parts and the TGs of the components, respectively. Examples are given to illustrate the grammatical properties of protocols and the design methodologies of TGs.