PLC-automata: a new class of implementable real-time automata

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Abstract

We introduce PLC-automata as a new class of automata which are tailored to deal with real-time properties of programmable logic controllers (PLCs). These devices are often used in industrial practice to solve controlling problems. Nevertheless, PLC-automata are not restricted to PLCs, but can be seen as a model for all polling systems. A semantics in an appropriate real-time temporal logic (duration calculus) is given and an implementation schema that fits the semantics is presented in a programming language for PLCs. A case study is used to demonstrate the suitability of this approach. We define several parallel composition operators, and present an alternative semantics in terms of timed automata for which model-checkers are available.

Keywords

Real time
Specification
Formal methods
Duration calculus
PLC

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1

This research was supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the project UniForM under Grant No. FKZ 01 IS 521 B3 and by the Leibniz Programme of the German Research Council (DFG) under Grant Ol 98/1-1.