The semantics of refinement chart

Abstract

Refinement techniques play a major role to build a complex system incrementally. Refinement is supported by several modelling techniques in the area of system designing. These modelling techniques are either in textual notation or in graphical notation. This paper focuses on refinement chart (RC) that is based on graphical notations. The refinement chart is a graphical representation of a complex system using layering approach, where functional blocks are divided into multiple simpler blocks in a new refinement level, without changing the original behaviour of the system. The main contribution is to provide a formal semantical description of the refinement chart. The refinement chart offers a clear view of assistance in "system" integration that models complex critical medical systems. Moreover, it also sketches a clear view of different operating modes and their associated components. To realize the effectiveness of this approach, we apply this refinement based graphical modelling technique to model the grand challenge: cardiac pacemaker. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.