Towards Action-Refinement in Process Algebras

Abstract We present a simple process algebra which supports a form of refinement of an action by a process and address the question of an appropriate equivalence relation for it. The main result of the paper is that an adequate equivalence can be defined in a very intuitive manner. In fact we show that it coincides with the timed-equivalence proposed by one of the authors. We also show that it can be characterized equationally.