1 research outputs found
Model Checking a TTCAN Implementation
Overall conference acceptance rate 22%This paper describes how the SPIN model checker has
been applied to find and correct problems in the software
design of a distributed vessel control system currently under
development at a control systems specialist in New Zealand.
The system under development is a mission critical control
system used on large marine vessels. Hence, the requirement
to study the architecture and verify the implementation
of the system. The model checking work reported
here focused on analysing the implementation of the Time-Triggered Controller-Area-Network (TTCAN) protocol, as
this is used as the backbone for communications between
devices and thus is a crucial part of the control system. The
starting point was to develop a set of general techniques for
model checking TTCAN-like protocols. The techniques developed
include modelling the progression of time efficiently
in SPIN, TTCAN message transmission, TTCAN error handling,
and CAN bus arbitration. These techniques form the
basis of a set of models developed to check the implementation
of TTCAN in the control system as well as the fault
tolerance schemes added to the system. Descriptions of the
models and properties developed to check the correctness
of the implementation are given, and verification results are
presented and discussed. This application of model checking
to an industrial design problem has uncovered and corrected
a number of potentially costly issues in the original
design