Statecharts Via Process Algebra

Statecharts is a visual language for specifying the behavior of reactive systems. The language extends finite-state machines with concepts of hierarchy, concurrency, and priority. Despite its popularity as a design notation for embedded systems, precisely defining its semantics has proved extremely challenging. In this paper, we present a simple process algebra, called Statecharts Process Language (SPL), which is expressive enough for encoding Statecharts in a structure-preserving and semantics-preserving manner. We also establish that the behavioral equivalence bisimulation, when applied to SPL, preserves Statecharts semantics.

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