A Timed Event System defining the state trajectory associated with the current and event segments came from the class of General System to allows non-deterministic behaviors in it.[3] Since the behaviors of DEVS can be described by Timed Event System, DEVS and RTDEVS is a sub-class or an equivalent class of Timed Event System.
A timed event system is a structure

where
is the set of events;
is the set of states;
is the set of initial states;
is the set of accepting states;
is the set of state trajectories in which
indicates that a state
can change into
along with an event segment
. If two state trajectories
and
are called contiguous if
, and two event trajectories
and
are contiguous. Two contiguous state trajectories
and
implies
.
Given a timed event system
, the set of its behaviors is called its language depending on the
observation time length. Let
be the observation time length.
If
,
-length observation language of
is denoted by
, and defined as
We call an event segment
a
-length behavior of
, if
.
By sending the observation time length
to infinity, we define infinite length observation language of
is denoted by
, and defined as
We call an event segment
an infinite-length behavior of
, if
.