A Discrete Event Systems Approach for Protocol Conversion

  • Authors:
  • Ratnesh Kumar;Sudhir Nelvagal;Steven I. Marcus

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0046;Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0046;Department of Electrical Engineering and Institute of Systems Research, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD 20742

  • Venue:
  • Discrete Event Dynamic Systems
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

A protocol mismatch occurs when heterogeneous networkstry to communicate with each other. Such mismatches are inevitabledue to the proliferation of a multitude of networking architectures,hardware, and software on one hand, and the need for global connectivityon the other hand. In order to circumvent this problem the solutionof protocol conversion has been proposed. In this paper we presenta systematic approach to protocol conversion using the theoryof supervisory control of discrete event systems, which was partiallyfirst addressed by Inan. We study the problem of designing aconverter for a given mismatched pair of protocols, using theirspecifications, and the specifications for the channel and theuser services. We introduce the notion of converter languagesand use it to obtain a necessary and sufficient condition forthe existence of protocol converter and present an effectivealgorithm for computing it whenever it exists.