A case study in abstraction using E-LOTOS and the FireWire

The proposed ISO standard Enhancements to LOTOS (E-LOTOS) is used to describe the leader election protocol of the IEEE 1394 serial multimedia bus (``FireWire''). The E-LOTOS language facilitates descriptions at several levels of abstraction, therefore a broad understanding of the protocol at an abstract level can be gained before adding more complexity and concrete detail. A secondary aim is to illustrate some of the novel features of E-LOTOS, particularly those for describing real time and parallelism. The speci®cation process is described in some detail, paying particular attention to the general applicability of E-LOTOS to protocol description. Veri®cation techniques and tools for E-LOTOS are considered, and comparisons are drawn between E-LOTOS and other similar formal methods .