Norio S h i r a t o r i , and Shoichi Noguchi, Members Research I n s t i t u t e of E l e c t r i c a l Communication, Tohoku U n i v e r s i t y , Sendai, Japan 980 SUMMARY This paper c o n s i d e r s t h e s p e c i f i c a t i o n described i n LOTOS, which i s t h e formal d e s c r i p t i o n language f o r t h e communication system. A d e c i s i o n method is proposed f o r t h e equivalence between two a r b i t r a r y syst e m s (between d e f i n i t i o n of s e r v i c e and t h e protocol s p e c i f i c a t i o n s , f o r example). I n t h i s paper, based on t h e d e f i n i t i o n of t h e weak b i s i m u l a t i o n equivalence, which i s t h e d e f i n i t i o n of equivalence i n LOTOS, t h e concepts of t h e k-weak b i s i m u l a t i o n equival e n c e and t h e canonical 1-weak b i s i m u l a t i o n are introduced.