Bridging Refinement of Interface Automata to Forward Simulation of I/O Automata

Interface automata is a formal model to be used for describing the temporal interface behaviors of software components. It adopts an alternating approach to design refinement, which is significantly different with the traditional use of automata. In this paper, it is proven that an interface automaton refines another if and only if there exists a special kind of forward simulation between their corresponding I/O automata, which shows the essential relation between interface automata and I/O automata on refinements.