From Estelle to Erlang

Abstract

Formal Description Techniques, like Estelle, are being used for the specifications of telecommunication protocols. While many telecommunication software manufacturers are still using programming languages that were developed in the late 1960s or 1970s, Ericson's Computer Science Laboratory in Sweden has developed a new declarative programming language, called Erlang, which supports concurrency, distribution, error handling and code updating. This article first describes how Estelle specifications can be translated into Erlang codes, then presents its application to the Alternating Bit protocol, and finally draws a comparison between this and the compilation method for automatic communication protocol implementation. The motivation behind this work comes from the need of having a better understanding between Erlang, being a very young declarative language and suited to implementing communication protocols due to the features that were built into it, and the FDT, Estelle, in order to obtain more benefits from these languages when implementing communication protocols.