1,213 research outputs found

    Distributed Real-Time Emulation of Formally-Defined Patterns for Safe Medical Device Control

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    Safety of medical devices and of their interoperation is an unresolved issue causing severe and sometimes deadly accidents for patients with shocking frequency. Formal methods, particularly in support of highly reusable and provably safe patterns which can be instantiated to many device instances can help in this regard. However, this still leaves open the issue of how to pass from their formal specifications in logical time to executable emulations that can interoperate in physical time with other devices and with simulations of patient and/or doctor behaviors. This work presents a specification-based methodology in which virtual emulation environments can be easily developed from formal specifications in Real-Time Maude, and can support interactions with other real devices and with simulation models. This general methodology is explained in detail and is illustrated with two concrete scenarios which are both instances of a common safe formal pattern: one scenario involves the interaction of a provably safe pacemaker with a simulated heart; the other involves the interaction of a safe controller for patient-induced analgesia with a real syringe pump.Comment: In Proceedings RTRTS 2010, arXiv:1009.398

    Modeling, Simulation and Emulation of Intelligent Domotic Environments

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    Intelligent Domotic Environments are a promising approach, based on semantic models and commercially off-the-shelf domotic technologies, to realize new intelligent buildings, but such complexity requires innovative design methodologies and tools for ensuring correctness. Suitable simulation and emulation approaches and tools must be adopted to allow designers to experiment with their ideas and to incrementally verify designed policies in a scenario where the environment is partly emulated and partly composed of real devices. This paper describes a framework, which exploits UML2.0 state diagrams for automatic generation of device simulators from ontology-based descriptions of domotic environments. The DogSim simulator may simulate a complete building automation system in software, or may be integrated in the Dog Gateway, allowing partial simulation of virtual devices alongside with real devices. Experiments on a real home show that the approach is feasible and can easily address both simulation and emulation requirement

    A survey of the PEPA tools

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    This paper surveys the history and the current state of tool support for modelling with the PEPA stochastic process algebra and the PEPA nets modelling language. We discuss future directions for tool support for the PEPA family of languages.

    Assessing and Improving Interoperability of Distributed Systems

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    Interoperabilität von verteilten Systemen ist eine Grundlage für die Entwicklung von neuen und innovativen Geschäftslösungen. Sie erlaubt es existierende Dienste, die auf verschiedenen Systemen angeboten werden, so miteinander zu verknüpfen, dass neue oder erweiterte Dienste zur Verfügung gestellt werden können. Außerdem kann durch diese Integration die Zuverlässigkeit von Diensten erhöht werden. Das Erreichen und Bewerten von Interoperabilität stellt jedoch eine finanzielle und zeitliche Herausforderung dar. Zur Sicherstellung und Bewertung von Interoperabilität werden systematische Methoden benötigt. Um systematisch Interoperabilität von Systemen erreichen und bewerten zu können, wurde im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit ein Prozess zur Verbesserung und Beurteilung von Interoperabilität (IAI) entwickelt. Der IAI-Prozess beinhaltet drei Phasen und kann die Interoperabilität von verteilten, homogenen und auch heterogenen Systemen bewerten und verbessern. Die Bewertung erfolgt dabei durch Interoperabilitätstests, die manuell oder automatisiert ausgeführt werden können. Für die Automatisierung von Interoperabilitätstests wird eine neue Methodik vorgestellt, die einen Entwicklungsprozess für automatisierte Interoperabilitätstestsysteme beinhaltet. Die vorgestellte Methodik erleichtert die formale und systematische Bewertung der Interoperabilität von verteilten Systemen. Im Vergleich zur manuellen Prüfung von Interoperabilität gewährleistet die hier vorgestellte Methodik eine höhere Testabdeckung, eine konsistente Testdurchführung und wiederholbare Interoperabilitätstests. Die praktische Anwendbarkeit des IAI-Prozesses und der Methodik für automatisierte Interoperabilitätstests wird durch drei Fallstudien belegt. In der ersten Fallstudie werden Prozess und Methodik für Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Netzwerke instanziiert. Die Interoperabilität von IMS-Netzwerken wurde bisher nur manuell getestet. In der zweiten und dritten Fallstudie wird der IAI-Prozess zur Beurteilung und Verbesserung der Interoperabilität von Grid- und Cloud-Systemen angewendet. Die Bewertung und Verbesserung dieser Interoperabilität ist eine Herausforderung, da Grid- und Cloud-Systeme im Gegensatz zu IMS-Netzwerken heterogen sind. Im Rahmen der Fallstudien werden Möglichkeiten für Integrations- und Interoperabilitätslösungen von Grid- und Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud-Systemen sowie von Grid- und Platform as a Service (PaaS) Cloud-Systemen aufgezeigt. Die vorgestellten Lösungen sind in der Literatur bisher nicht dokumentiert worden. Sie ermöglichen die komplementäre Nutzung von Grid- und Cloud-Systemen, eine vereinfachte Migration von Grid-Anwendungen in ein Cloud-System sowie eine effiziente Ressourcennutzung. Die Interoperabilitätslösungen werden mit Hilfe des IAI-Prozesses bewertet. Die Durchführung der Tests für Grid-IaaS-Cloud-Systeme erfolgte manuell. Die Interoperabilität von Grid-PaaS-Cloud-Systemen wird mit Hilfe der Methodik für automatisierte Interoperabilitätstests bewertet. Interoperabilitätstests und deren Beurteilung wurden bisher in der Grid- und Cloud-Community nicht diskutiert, obwohl sie eine Basis für die Entwicklung von standardisierten Schnittstellen zum Erreichen von Interoperabilität zwischen Grid- und Cloud-Systemen bieten.Achieving interoperability of distributed systems offers means for the development of new and innovative business solutions. Interoperability allows the combination of existing services provided on different systems, into new or extended services. Such an integration can also increase the reliability of the provided service. However, achieving and assessing interoperability is a technical challenge that requires high effort regarding time and costs. The reasons are manifold and include differing implementations of standards as well as the provision of proprietary interfaces. The implementations need to be engineered to be interoperable. Techniques that assess and improve interoperability systematically are required. For the assurance of reliable interoperation between systems, interoperability needs to be assessed and improved in a systematic manner. To this aim, we present the Interoperability Assessment and Improvement (IAI) process, which describes in three phases how interoperability of distributed homogeneous and heterogeneous systems can be improved and assessed systematically. The interoperability assessment is achieved by means of interoperability testing, which is typically performed manually. For the automation of interoperability test execution, we present a new methodology including a generic development process for a complete and automated interoperability test system. This methodology provides means for a formalized and systematic assessment of systems' interoperability in an automated manner. Compared to manual interoperability testing, the application of our methodology has the following benefits: wider test coverage, consistent test execution, and test repeatability. We evaluate the IAI process and the methodology for automated interoperability testing in three case studies. Within the first case study, we instantiate the IAI process and the methodology for Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks, which were previously assessed for interoperability only in a manual manner. Within the second and third case study, we apply the IAI process to assess and improve the interoperability of grid and cloud computing systems. Their interoperability assessment and improvement is challenging, since cloud and grid systems are, in contrast to IMS networks, heterogeneous. We develop integration and interoperability solutions for grids and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds as well as for grids and Platform as a Service (PaaS) clouds. These solutions are unique and foster complementary usage of grids and clouds, simplified migration of grid applications into the cloud, as well as efficient resource utilization. In addition, we assess the interoperability of the grid-cloud interoperability solutions. While the tests for grid-IaaS clouds are performed manually, we applied our methodology for automated interoperability testing for the assessment of interoperability to grid-PaaS cloud interoperability successfully. These interoperability assessments are unique in the grid-cloud community and provide a basis for the development of standardized interfaces improving the interoperability between grids and clouds

    Towards a Formal Theory of Interoperability

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    This dissertation proposes a formal theory of interoperability that explains 1) what interoperability is as opposed to how it works, 2) how to tell whether two or more systems can interoperate and 3) how to identify whether systems are interoperating or merely exchanging bits and bytes. The research provides a formal model of data in M&S that captures all possible representations of a real or imagined thing and distinguishes between existential dependencies and transformational dependencies. Existential dependencies capture the relationships within a model while transformational dependencies capture the relationships between interactions with a model. These definitions are used to formally specify interoperation, the ability to exchange information, as a necessary condition for interoperability. Theorems of interoperation that capture the nature and boundaries of the interoperation space and how to measure it are formulated. Interoperability is formally captured as a subset of the interoperation space for which transformational dependencies can be fulfilled. Theorems of interoperability that capture the interoperability space and how to measure it are presented. Using graph theory and complexity theory, the model of data is reformulated as a graph, and the complexity of interoperation and interoperability is shown to be at least NP-Complete. Model Based Data Engineering (MBDE) is formally defined using the model of data introduced earlier and transformed into a heuristic that supports interoperability. This heuristic is shown to be more powerful than current approaches in that it is consistent and can easily be verified

    Infectious Disease Ontology

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    Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing of data and information. In this chapter, we describe different types of vocabulary resources and emphasize those features of formal ontologies that make them most useful for computational applications. We describe current uses of ontologies and discuss future goals for ontology-based computing, focusing on its use in the field of infectious diseases. We review the largest and most widely used vocabulary resources relevant to the study of infectious diseases and conclude with a description of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) suite of interoperable ontology modules that together cover the entire infectious disease domain

    Unmanned systems interoperability standards

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    Over the past several years, there has been rapid growth in the development and employment of unmanned systems in military and civilian endeavors. Some military organizations have expressed concern that these systems are being fielded without sufficient capabilities to interoperate with existing systems. Despite recognition of this requirement, interoperability efforts remain diverse and disjointed across the United States and internationally. The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, California, was sponsored by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise (JGRE) in Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16) to explore (1) enhancement of robotics education; (2) improved representation of robotic systems in combat simulations; and (3) interoperability standards for military robotics systems. This report discusses work performed in FY16 to identify current and emerging interoperability standards for unmanned systems, including interactions of robotic systems with command and control (C2) and simulation systems. The investigation included assessment of the applicability of standardization activities in the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) in its development of the Phase 1 Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) and currently in-progress Command and Control Systems - Simulation Systems Interoperation (C2SIM) standardization efforts. The report provides a recommended approach, standards, activities, and timetable for a cross-system communications roadmap.Secretary of Defense Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise, 3090 Defense Pentagon, Room 5C756, Washington, DC 20301Office of the Secretary of Defense Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited
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