Scope and Objective

Protocol engineering involves the use of formal methods in every phase of the development process of communication protocols and distributed systems. This discipline has been increasingly practised as formal methods provide a framework within which systems and services can be specified, verified, developed and tested in a systematic manner. This symposium serves as a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in advances in formal methods, and methodologies in using formal methods to specify, test and verify communication protocols and services. Topics of interests include (but are not restricted to) the following:

Formal methods and their enhancements:

• Theoretical foundations

• Time extensions and modelling techniques

• Global state and concurrency modelling

• Object-oriented modelling

• Dynamic configuration modelling

System design based on formal methods:

• Methodology of design of protocols and distributed systems

• Software engineering based on formal methods

• Architectural concepts

• Evaluation of formal techniques

Validation of formal specifications:

• Verification methods

• Solutions to state-space explosion problem

• Coverage of validations

• Performance analysis based on formal methods

• Simulation techniques

Implementation of formal specifications:

• Stepwise refinement

• Theory of equivalence transformations

• Generation of programming code or hardware

Testing based on formal specifications:

• Testing theory

• Theory of test selection and coverage

• Formal notions of conformance

• Design for Testability

• Performance and interoperability testing