Advances in binary decision based programmable controllers

Binary decision automata are finite state machines that evaluate switching functions by means of decision rather than Boolean logic. The capability of binary decision machines (BDMs) to evaluate sequential functions is addressed by the authors. The BDM is shown to be less powerful than the deterministic finite automation (DFA) model from automata theory. However, an extended BDM with input control is shown to be equivalent to the DFA and thus can be used to implement finitely computable sequential functions. The use of a BDM finite automaton instead of a more general model is motivated on the basis of expected case time and space complexity analysis. A hardware design following from this analysis is described, and programming methods are discussed