Verifizierbare Entwicklung eines satellitenbasierten Zugsicherungssystems mit Petrinetzen

Nowadays model-based techniques are widely used in system design and development, especially for safety-critical systems such as train control systems. Given a design model, executable codes could be generated automatically from the model following certain transformation rules. A high-quality model of a system provides a good understanding, a favourable structure, a reasonable scale and abstraction level as well as realistic behaviours with respect to the concurrent operation of independent subsystems. Motivated by this principle, a first Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model of a satellite-based train control system (SatZB) with the capability of continuous simulation is developed employing the BASYSNET method which adopts Petri nets as the means of description during the whole development process. After establishing the system model, the verification tasks are identified based on the hazard analysis of the train control system. To verify the identified tasks for quality assurance, verification by means of simulation, formal analysis and testing is carried out considering the four representing system properties: function, state, structure and behaviour. For structural analysis, the concept of open nets is proposed to check the reproducibility of empty markings of scenario nets, the existence of dead transitions in the scenario nets, and the terminating states of the scenario nets. The system behaviour, in which states are involved, is investigated by reachability analysis. Unlike the conventional method of reachability analysis by calculating the state space of the Petri net, techniques based on Petri net unfoldings are introduced in this thesis. As to the functional verification, two model-based test generation techniques, i.e., CPN-based and SPENAT (Safe Place Transition Nets with Attributes)-based techniques, are presented. In this thesis, the proposed methods are exemplified by the application to the on-board module of SatZB model. According to the verification results, no errors were found in the module. Therefore, the confidence in the quality of the on-board module has been significantly increased.Heutzutage werden in zahlreichen Anwendungen modellbasierte Techniken zur Systementwicklung, insbesondere für sicherheitskritische Systeme wie Eisenbahnleit- und -sicherungssysteme, verwendet. Aus einem Design Modell kann dabei ausführbarer Code automatisch nach bestimmten Transformationsregeln generiert werden. Ein hochwertiges Modell des Systems bietet für die Entwicklung ein gutes Verständnis, eine günstige Struktur, eine angemessene Größenordnung und Abstraktionsebene als auch realistische Verhaltensweisen in Bezug auf den gleichzeitigen Betrieb von unabhängigen Subsystemen. Motiviert von dieses Prinzip wird ein erstes Farbige Petri-Netz (CPN)-Modell eines satellitenbasierten Zugsicherungssystem (SatZB) unter Verwendung der BASYSNET Methode entwickelt, der Petri-Netze als Beschreibungsmittel während des gesamten Entwicklungsprozesses nutzt. Dieses Modell bietet die Möglichkeit zur kontinuierlichen Simulation des Systemverhaltens. Nach der Erstellung des Systemmodells werden die Verifikationsaufgaben auf der Grundlage der Gefährdungsanalyse des Zugsicherungssystems identifiziert. Die abgeleiteten Bedingungen werden zur Qualitätssicherung durch Simulation, formale Analysen und Tests unter Berücksichtigung der vier Systemeigenschaften (Funktion, Zustand, Struktur und Verhalten) verifiziert. Für die Strukturanalyse wird das Konzept der offenen Netzen vorgeschlagen, um die Reproduzierbarkeit der leeren Markierungen der Szenario-Netze, die Existenz der Toten Transitionen in den Szenario-Netze, und die Abschluss Zustände der Szenario-Netze zu prüfen. Das Systemverhalten wird dabei durch Zustände beschrieben und durch eine Erreichbarkeitsanalyse untersucht. Im Gegensatz zu der konventionellen Methode, welche die Erreichbarkeit durch die Berechnung des Zustandsraums des Petri-Netzes analysiert, werden in dieser Arbeit Techniken auf Basis von Petri-Netz-Entfaltung eingeführt. Für die funktionale Verifikation werden zwei modellbasierte Testgenerierungstechniken, eine CPN-basierte und eine SPENAT (Sicheres Petrinetz mit Attributen)-basierte, vorgestellt. In dieser Arbeit werden die vorgeschlagenen Methoden durch die Anwendung auf das On-Board-Modul des SatZB-Modells veranschaulicht. Dabei wurden nach dem Abschluss der Prüfungen keine Fehler im Modul gefunden, wodurch das Vertrauen in die Qualität des On-Board-Moduls deutlich erhöht wurde

Correctness of services and their composition

We study correctness of services and their composition and investigate how the design of correct service compositions can be systematically supported. We thereby focus on the communication protocol of the service and approach these questions using formal methods and make contributions to three scenarios of SOC.Wir studieren die Korrektheit von Services und Servicekompositionen und untersuchen, wie der Entwurf von korrekten Servicekompositionen systematisch unterstützt werden kann. Wir legen dabei den Fokus auf das Kommunikationsprotokoll der Services. Mithilfe von formalen Methoden tragen wir zu drei Szenarien von SOC bei

Correctness of services and their composition

We study correctness of services and their composition and investigate how the design of correct service compositions can be systematically supported. We thereby focus on the communication protocol of the service and approach these questions using formal methods and make contributions to three scenarios of SOC.Wir studieren die Korrektheit von Services und Servicekompositionen und untersuchen, wie der Entwurf von korrekten Servicekompositionen systematisch unterstützt werden kann. Wir legen dabei den Fokus auf das Kommunikationsprotokoll der Services. Mithilfe von formalen Methoden tragen wir zu drei Szenarien von SOC bei

Basis marking representation of Petri net reachability spaces and its application to the reachability problem

In this paper a compact representation of the reachability graph of a Petri net is proposed. The transition set of a Petri net is partitioned into the subsets of explicit and implicit transitions, in such a way that the subnet induced by implicit transitions does not contain directed cycles. The firing of implicit transitions can be abstracted so that the reachability set of the net can be completely characterized by a subset of reachable markings called basis makings. We show that to determine a max-cardinality-T_I basis partition is an NPhard problem, but a max-set-T_I basis partition can be determined in polynomial time. The generalized version of the marking reachability problem in a Petri net can be solved by a practically efficient algorithm based on the basis reachability graph. Finally this approach is further extended to unbounded nets

Operating guidelines for services

In the paradigm of service-oriented computing, companies organize their core competencies as services and may request other functionalities from services of other companies. Services provide high flexibility, platform independent loose coupling, and distributed execution. They may thus help to reduce the complexity of dynamically binding and integrating heterogenous processes within and across organizations. The vision of service-oriented architectures is to provide a framework for publishing new services, for on demand searching for and discovery of existing services, and for dynamically binding services to achieve common business goals. That way, each individual organization gains more flexibility to dynamically react on new challenges. As services may be created or modified, or collaborations may be restructured at any point in time, a new challenge arises in this setting—the challenge for deciding the compatibility of the composed services before their actual binding. Recent literature distinguishes four different aspects of service compatibility: syntactical, behavioral, semantical, and non-functional compatibility. In this thesis, we focus on behavioral compatibility and abstract from the other aspects. Potential behavioral incompatibilities between services include deadlocks (two services wait for a message of each other), livelocks (two services keep exchanging messages without progressing), and pending messages that have been sent but cannot be received anymore. For stateful services that interact via asynchronous message passing, deciding behavioral compatibility is far from trivial. Local changes to one service may introduce errors in some or even all other services of an interaction. The verification of behavioral compatibility suffers from state explosion problems and is restricted by privacy issues. That is, the parties of an interaction are essentially autonomous and may be competitors in other business fields. Consequently, they do not want to reveal the internals of their processes to the other participants in order to hide trade secrets. To systematically approach this challenge, we introduce a formal framework based on Petri nets and automata for service modeling and formalize behavioral compatibility as deadlock freedom of the composition of the services. The main contribution of this thesis is to introduce the concept of the operating guideline of a service. Operating guidelines provide a formal characterization of the set of all behaviorally compatible services R for a given service S. Usually, this set is infinite. However, the operating guideline OGS of a service S serves as a finite representation of this infinite set. Furthermore, the operating guideline of S reveals only internals that are inevitably necessary to decide behavioral compatibility with S. We provide a construction method of operating guidelines for finite-state services with bounded communication. Operating guidelines can be used in many applications in the context of serviceoriented computing. The most fundamental application is to support the discovery of behaviorally compatible services. To this end, we develop a matching procedure that efficiently decides whether a given service R is characterized by the operating guideline OGS of a service S. If R matches, then both services R and S are behaviorally compatible and can be bound together to interact with each other. If R does not match with OGS, then the services are behaviorally incompatible and may run into severe behavioral errors and not reach their common business goal. Operating guidelines can furthermore be applied in the novel research areas of service substitutability and the generation of adapter services, for instance. To this end, we develop methods to compare the sets of services characterized by the operating guidelines OGS and OGS0 . If OGS0 characterizes more services than OGS, then the service S can be substituted by the service S0 without loosing any behaviorally compatible interaction partner R. Furthermore, we show how to synthesize a service R from the operating guideline OGS such that R is behaviorally compatible to S by construction. All results presented in this thesis are implemented in our service analysis tool Fiona. Fiona may compute operating guidelines for services modeled as Petri nets. It may match a service with an operating guideline, compare operating guidelines for equivalence or an inclusion relation, and synthesize service adapters for behaviorally incompatible services. Together with the tool BPEL2oWFN— which translates web services specified in BPEL into Petri net models of the services—we can immediately apply our results to services that stem from practic

Verification of Nonblockingness in Bounded Petri Nets With Minimax Basis Reachability Graphs

This paper proposes a semi-structural approach to verify the nonblockingness of a Petri net. We construct a structure, called minimax basis reachability graph (minimax-BRG): it provides an abstract description of the reachability set of a net while preserving all information needed to test if the net is blocking. We prove that a bounded deadlock-free Petri net is nonblocking if and only if its minimax-BRG is unobstructed, which can be verified by solving a set of integer constraints and then examining the minimax-BRG. For Petri nets that are not deadlock-free, one needs to determine the set of deadlock markings. This can be done with an approach based on the computation of maximal implicit firing sequences enabled by the markings in the minimax-BRG. The approach we developed does not require the construction of the reachability graph and has wide applicability.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Middleware control systems design and analysis using message interpreted Petri Nets (MIPN)

Many distributed frameworks use a message-oriented middleware to interchange information among several independent distributed modules. Those modules make up complex systems implementing basic actions and reporting events about their state. This paper introduces the Message Interpreted Petri Net (MIPN) model to design, analyze, and execute the central control of these middleware systems. The MIPN is a new Petri net extension that adds message-based high-level information communications and hierarchic capabilities. It also contributes to the definition and study of new properties such as terminability for the hierarchy-wide analysis of a system. Special attention is given to the analyzability of the model. Useful relations between the individual properties of each MIPN and the global properties of a hierarchic MIPNs system are extracted through a mathematical analysis of the model. The goal is to analyze each net separately and then build up the properties of the whole system. This results in a great aid for the programmer and optimizes the development process. This paper also shows the actual integration of this new MIPN model in different robot control frameworks to design, analyze, execute, monitor, log, and debug tasks in such heterogeneous systems. Finally, some applications created with this framework in the fields of robotics, autonomous vehicles, and logistics are also presentedMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. EXP00139978CER-2021100

The Impact of Petri Nets on System-of-Systems Engineering

The successful engineering of a large-scale system-of-systems project towards deterministic behaviour depends on integrating autonomous components using international communications standards in accordance with dynamic requirements. To-date, their engineering has been unsuccessful: no combination of top-down and bottom-up engineering perspectives is adopted, and information exchange protocol and interfaces between components are not being precisely specified. Various approaches such as modelling, and architecture frameworks make positive contributions to system-of-systems specification but their successful implementation is still a problem. One of the most popular modelling notations available for specifying systems, UML, is intuitive and graphical but also ambiguous and imprecise. Supplying a range of diagrams to represent a system under development, UML lacks simulation and exhaustive verification capability. This shortfall in UML has received little attention in the context of system-of-systems and there are two major research issues: 1. Where the dynamic, behavioural diagrams of UML can and cannot be used to model and analyse system-of-systems 2. Determining how Petri nets can be used to improve the specification and analysis of the dynamic model of a system-of-systems specified using UML This thesis presents the strengths and weaknesses of Petri nets in relation to the specification of system-of-systems and shows how Petri net models can be used instead of conventional UML Activity Diagrams. The model of the system-of-systems can then be analysed and verified using Petri net theory. The Petri net formalism of behaviour is demonstrated using two case studies from the military domain. The first case study uses Petri nets to specify and analyse a close air support mission. This case study concludes by indicating the strengths, weaknesses, and shortfalls of the proposed formalism in system-of-systems specification. The second case study considers specification of a military exchange network parameters problem and the results are compared with the strengths and weaknesses identified in the first case study. Finally, the results of the research are formulated in the form of a Petri net enhancement to UML (mapping existing activity diagram elements to Petri net elements) to meet the needs of system-of-systems specification, verification and validation

Recent advances in petri nets and concurrency

CEUR Workshop Proceeding