Towards a Formal Framework for Mobile, Service-Oriented Sensor-Actuator Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework based on the -calculus and KLAIM for modeling and analyzing service-oriented sensor-actuator networks, enabling verification of network behavior under failures and topology changes.

Contribution

It develops a formal, compositional framework for SOSANETs using -calculus and KLAIM, supporting modeling of dynamic topologies and failures, which was previously lacking.

Findings

Framework supports modeling of topology changes and failures.

Application demonstrated through a medical domain use case.

Lays foundation for future verification and analysis tools.

Abstract

Service-oriented sensor-actuator networks (SOSANETs) are deployed in health-critical applications like patient monitoring and have to fulfill strong safety requirements. However, a framework for the rigorous formal modeling and analysis of SOSANETs does not exist. In particular, there is currently no support for the verification of correct network behavior after node failure or loss/addition of communication links. To overcome this problem, we propose a formal framework for SOSANETs. The main idea is to base our framework on the \pi-calculus, a formally defined, compositional and well-established formalism. We choose KLAIM, an existing formal language based on the \pi-calculus as the foundation for our framework. With that, we are able to formally model SOSANETs with possible topology changes and network failures. This provides the basis for our future work on prediction, analysis and verification of the network behavior of these systems. Furthermore, we illustrate the real-life applicability of this approach by modeling and extending a use case scenario from the medical domain.