Cascaded Finite-State Machines

In this paper, networks of finite-state machines, rather than individual machines, are discussed. The investigation centers around cascade networks, where the output of one machine serves as an input to another. It is shown how, by means of connection matrices, the characteristics of such a network can be obtained from those of the component machines, and how a specified machine can be decomposed into a number of cascaded components. The advantages of such a decomposition, as well as some of the problems that remain to be solved in this area, are discussed.