A Formalism for Remotely Interacting Processes

. An earlier paper [21] introduced process calculi with notions of time suited to express concurrent and distributed real-time computations. However, they cannot sufficiently model asynchronous communication in distributed systems. In this paper we present a process calculus with the ability to express asynchronous message passing with location-dependent transmission delay. It allows us to describe temporal and behavioral properties of asynchronous interactions among remotely located processes. Based on the process calculus, we also develop a "speed-sensitive" order relation for distributed real-time processes. It is formulated based on the notion of bisimulation and can distinguish between behaviorally equivalent processes performing at different speeds. 1 Introduction Distributed systems consist of multiple processors cooperating by sending messages over communication networks. These communication networks often have transmission delay: a physical and logical function of geographic ..