Modular design of hybrid languages by explicit modeling of semantic adaptation

Abstract

The engineering of a complex cyber-physical system (CPS) involves the creation and simulation of hybrid models often encompassing multiple levels of abstraction and combining different formalisms, often not expressible in any single existing formalisms. Modular language engineering is thus essential for effective and efficient development of new formalisms, appropriate for the task. In our work, each modeling language is represented as a language specification fragment: a modular representation of the syntax and semantics. We propose a white-box technique for explicitly modeling the definition and composition of the fragments. In this paper, we focus on the composition of the operational semantics (i.e., the semantic adaptation) of hybrid languages. This enables automatic synthesis of a simulator for the hybrid language. Our approach is demonstrated by creating two well-known hybrid languages as a composition of Timed Finite State Automata (TFSA) and Causal Block Diagrams (CBD) - hybrid TFSA and hybrid CBD.