An ALF communication architecture: design and automatedimplementation

摘要

The application level framing (ALF) principle states thatninformation should be packetized by the application into applicationndata units (ADUs), each of which should be at the same time a unit ofntransmission, a unit of control, and a unit of processing. This paperndescribes a communication system architecture based on the ALFnprinciple, which then attempts to maximize what might be gained fromnusing ADUs. In this architecture, protocols are tailored to applicationnrequirements, i.e., to ADU types. In a first approximation, we considernthree specific requirements, namely, in-order delivery, reliablendelivery, and real-time delivery. ALF-based systems promise performancengains; however, implementing them in practice might be a complex task.nTherefore, we have developed a compiler that automatically generatesnALF-based communication systems starting from formal specification ofnapplications. We have used this compiler to generate protocols tailorednto three specific applications. Experimental results show that the gainsnare linked to application “complexity”