Development and evaluation of symbolic model checker based on approximation for real‐time systems

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, the authors describe symbolic model checking for real‐time systems based on approximation. It is important to determine how to reduce the increase in verification cost due to timed‐state processing during symbolic model checking of a real‐time system. Verification techniques that use a set of approximate states instead of exact timed states in a reachability analysis of a real‐time system have been proposed to increase the effect in reducing the verification cost. Therefore, the authors propose a symbolic model checking technique for real‐time systems that uses a set of approximate states. The verification algorithm calculates the set of approximate states by performing fixpoint calculations based on an approximation corresponding to a computation tree logic (CTL) formula. The authors implemented the proposed algorithm and compared it with existing real‐time symbolic model checkers. They obtained results showing that the proposed technique is effective for verifying a large‐scale system that includes many clock variables. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(10): 83–101, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10565