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Automata-based refinement checking for real-time systems

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Computer Science - Research and Development

Abstract

Today’s mechatronic systems are increasingly interconnected using communication protocols for realizing advanced functionality. Communication protocols underlie hard real-time constraints and need to meet high quality standards for ensuring the safety of the system. A common approach for achieving their necessary quality and mastering their impending complexity is model-driven development. Applying this approach, a developer builds formal models of the communication protocols and applies formal verification techniques (e.g., model checking) for proving that the communication is safe. However, these techniques typically face the state-explosion problem that prevents proofs for large systems like interconnected mechatronic systems. In previous publications, we introduced the MechatronicUML method that provides a compositional verification approach for tackling the state-explosion problem. A key enabler for such an approach is a definition of refinement. In this paper, we extend the compositional verification approach of MechatronicUML in particular by using different kinds of refinement definitions including an automatic selection of the most suitable refinement definition. In addition, we significantly extend an existing approach of test automata construction for refinement checking. Using this approach we can also guarantee that a refined model is constructed correctly concerning the selected and applied refinement definition. We evaluate our approach by an example of an advanced railway transportation system.

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Notes

  1. http://www.railcab.de.

  2. Computation tree logic (CTL), generalization of CTL (CTL*).

  3. http://www.pst.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/projekte/hugo/.

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Acknowledgments

This work was developed in the course of the Collaborative Research Center 614—Self-optimizing Concepts and Structures in Mechanical Engineering—University of Paderborn, and was published on its behalf and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Christian Brenner is supported by the International Graduate School Dynamic Intelligent Systems. We thank Marie Christin Platenius for useful comments on draft versions of the paper. Moreover, we thank David Schubert for implementing the algorithms presented in this paper and Christopher Gerking for setting up the Eclipse update site.

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  1. Software Engineering Group, Heinz Nixdorf Institute, University of Paderborn, 33102 , Paderborn, Germany

    Christian Heinzemann, Christian Brenner, Stefan Dziwok & Wilhelm Schäfer

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  1. Christian Heinzemann
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Correspondence to Stefan Dziwok.

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Heinzemann, C., Brenner, C., Dziwok, S. et al. Automata-based refinement checking for real-time systems. Comput Sci Res Dev 30, 255–283 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00450-014-0257-9

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