Abstract. In contrast to protocols of the network or transport layer the protocols for medium access have to consider the timing behavior of the communication medium. Although SDL is a widely used language for the specification of communication systems, in most cases time critical parts are not considered. In this paper, a design pattern is discussed that allows the specification of time critical functionality sucg as multiplexers or Quality-of-Service (QoS) schedulers. In many applications such services are running in a synchronous manner with the communication medium. A notation for timing aspects is needed for the specification of this behavior which itself is only possible in a sensible way with a formal model of time. Clocks are used to define the term real-time in a formal way, leading to the specification of timing constraints, for example sending data packets in deterministic time intervals within a communication system. In a case study from the mobile communication area, the design pattern was used to specify the MAC-Layer including time critical parts.
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