A Semantics for Timed MSC

Abstract Message Sequence Charts (MSC) is a graphical and textual specification language developed by ITU-T. It is widely used in telecommunication software engineering for specifying behavioral scenarios. Recently, the time concept has been introduced into MSC'2000. To support the specification and verification of real-time systems using timed MSC, we need to define its formal semantics. In this paper, we use timed lposet as a semantic model and give a formal semantics for timed MSC. We first define an event in a timed MSC as a timed lposet, then give a formal semantics for timed basic MSCs, timed MSCs with structures and high-level MSCs. In this paper, we also discuss some important issues related to timed MSC.