Visualisation and Verification of Communication Protocols for Networked Distributed Systems

Abstract

The successful design and application of a large and complex manufacturing system relies not only on the maturity of its fundamental design, but also on the technologies for seamless integration and coordination of system components, since a large manufacturing or logistic system often adopts a decentralised control architecture to manage its complexity. System components are usually distributed; their behaviours are enacted locally and autonomously. The control objective at the system-level is achieved by the executions of the sub-objectives at the component level, subjected to the condition that the controls of the sub-systems have to be coordinated via effective communication. In developing algorithms for communication and coordination of a networked distributed system, algorithm verification is complicated and trivial, due to the invisible information system. In this chapter, we propose to use the conventional simulation tool, Deneb/QUEST, for modelling and visualisation of the coordinating behaviours. Its vivid graphical environment can be a great assistance in accelerating software debugging and verification and in reducing the time for software development. General architecture of a networked distribute system is introduced, the system components are analysed, and the correspondences between these components and QUEST elements are established. A case study for the verification of ring extrema determination (RED) algorithm is used as an example to illustrate the general procedure and the feasibility of the proposed approach.