Towards behavior elaboration and synthesis using modes

Abstract

Early system requirements are often captured by declarative and property-based artifacts, such as scenarios and goals. While such artifacts are intuitive and useful, they are partial and typically lack an overarching structure to allow systematic elaboration of the fragmented behaviors they denote. I aim to develop a design technique for structuring the partial specifications by partitioning the state-space based on Parnas’ notions of ‘modes’ and ‘modeclasses’. A mode is set of states, characterized by a predicate. A mode-class is a set of disjoint modes completely covering the state space. The structuring framework supports early elaboration of partial specification, and facilitates improved synthesis of integrated system behavioral prototype.