Extending interval logic to real time systems

Abstract

Interval logic is a temporal logic that provides a higher-level framework for specifying distributed systems. The concepts of intervals and interval composition form the basic structure of many specifications. Interval logic allows such conceptual requirements to be stated rather directly and intuitively.

Temporal logic has suffered from its orientation towards eventuality rather than immediacy in real time; indeed, pure temporal logic makes no reference to time! There are many real time properties that are critical to the specification of distributed systems. We have been able to extend interval logic to allow real time bounds on intervals and to allow events to be defined by real time offsets from other events. The extension is clean and sufficient to describe real time constraints directly and easily.

The interval logic is demonstrated by application to the lift specification example.

This research was supported by Rome Air Development Center Contract No. F30602-85-C-0024, and by NASA-Langley Research Center Contract No. NAS1-17067. The author's current address is Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106