Practical Automated Partial Verification of Multi-Paradigm Real-Time Models

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated verification method for complex real-time systems that combines automata and logic formalisms, reducing continuous-time analysis to discrete-time for efficiency and applicability.

Contribution

It introduces a novel technique that reduces continuous-time verification problems to discrete-time, enabling effective analysis of multi-paradigm real-time models combining automata and logic.

Findings

Successful verification of a communication protocol example

Consistent results with the proposed technique

Good performance in verification tests

Abstract

This article introduces a fully automated verification technique that permits to analyze real-time systems described using a continuous notion of time and a mixture of operational (i.e., automata-based) and descriptive (i.e., logic-based) formalisms. The technique relies on the reduction, under reasonable assumptions, of the continuous-time verification problem to its discrete-time counterpart. This reconciles in a viable and effective way the dense/discrete and operational/descriptive dichotomies that are often encountered in practice when it comes to specifying and analyzing complex critical systems. The article investigates the applicability of the technique through a significant example centered on a communication protocol. More precisely, concurrent runs of the protocol are formalized by parallel instances of a Timed Automaton, while the synchronization rules between these instances are specified through Metric Temporal Logic formulas, thus creating a multi-paradigm model. Verification tests run on this model using a bounded validity checker implementing the technique show consistent results and interesting performances.