Construction of formal models and verifying property specifications through an example of railway interlocking systems

Gábor Lukács,Tamás Bartha

doi:10.1556/606.2019.14.2.4

Gábor Lukács, Tamás Bartha

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1556/606.2019.14.2.4

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Abstract

Abstract The use of formal modeling has seen an increasing interest in the development of safety-critical, embedded microcomputer-controlled railway interlocking systems, due to its ability to spec...

Highlights

In the railway interlocking system development there is a growing need for formal specification methods, because development teams want to create systems with a guaranteed level of safety
The use of formal modeling has seen an increasing interest in the development of safety-critical, embedded microcomputer-controlled railway interlocking systems, due to its ability to specify the behavior of the systems using mathematically precise rules
The inherent mathematical, computer science-related background knowledge is hidden to a large extent, and the verification of formal models is performed by existing model checking tools. This approach is already used in other fields, this paper describes a novel application of the idea to the railway interlocking development

Summary

Introduction

In the railway interlocking system development there is a growing need for formal specification methods, because development teams want to create systems with a guaranteed level of safety. The application of formal methods is prescribed by the relevant standards (e.g. EN 50128 [1], EN 50129 [2]). These standards classify the formal techniques as ‘highly recommended’ on the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3 and 4 (e.g. EN 50128 Annex ‘A’, Table A.2, A.4, A.5) [1]. Unauthenticated | Downloaded 11/02/21 11:18 AM UTC

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