Syntax and semantics of the compositional interchange format for hybrid systems

Different modeling formalisms for timed and hybrid systems exist, each of whichaddresses a specific set of problems, and has its own set of features. These for-malisms and tools can be used in each stage of the embedded systems development,to verify and validate various requirements.The Compositional Interchange Format (CIF), is a formalism based on hybridautomata, which are composed using process algebraic operators. CIF aims toestablish interoperability among a wide range of formalisms and tools by means ofmodel transformations and co-simulation, which avoids the need for implementingmany bilateral translators.This work presents the syntax and formal semantics of CIF. The semantics isshown to be compositional, and proven to preserve certain algebraic properties,which express our intuition about the behavior of the language operators. In ad-dition we show how CIF operators can be combined to implement widely usedconstructs present in other timed and hybrid formalisms, and we illustrate the ap-plicability of the formalism by developing several examples.Based on the formal specification of CIF, an Eclipse based simulation environ-ment has been developed. We expect this work to serve as the basis for the formaldefinition of semantic preserving transformations between various languages forthe specification of timed and hybrid systems.