Decomposing port automata

Abstract

Port automata are an operational model for component connectors in a coordination language such as Reo. They describe which sets of ports can synchronize in each state of the connector being modelled. This paper presents decomposition theorems for port automata, namely that all (finite) port automata can be generated from a small set of primitive port automata. Applying these results to component connectors means that all component connectors can be constructed from just two primitive connectors.