Timed Automata Robustness Analysis via Model Checking

TL;DR

This paper introduces new concepts and techniques for analyzing the robustness of timed automata during the design phase, addressing uncertainties in timing constants and ensuring system specifications are maintained despite perturbations.

Contribution

It presents novel methods for robustness analysis of timed automata, aiding designers in handling timing uncertainties and perturbations during system development.

Findings

Techniques for robustness analysis under timing uncertainties

Methods to ensure specification compliance despite perturbations

Guidance for fixing models during the design phase

Abstract

Timed automata (TA) have been widely adopted as a suitable formalism to model time-critical systems. Furthermore, contemporary model-checking tools allow the designer to check whether a TA complies with a system specification. However, the exact timing constants are often uncertain during the design phase. Consequently, the designer is often able to build a TA with a correct structure, however, the timing constants need to be tuned to satisfy the specification. Moreover, even if the TA initially satisfies the specification, it can be the case that just a slight perturbation during the implementation causes a violation of the specification. Unfortunately, model-checking tools are usually not able to provide any reasonable guidance on how to fix the model in such situations. In this paper, we propose several concepts and techniques to cope with the above mentioned design phase issues when dealing with reachability and safety specifications.