A contract-based formalism for the specification of heterogeneous systems

Benvenuti, Luca; Ferrari, Alberto; Mangeruca, Leonardo; Mazzi, E.; Sofronis, Christos

doi:10.1109/fdl.2008.4641436

Cited by 36 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The mentioned trace-based contract theories [7,8] are also demonstrated to be instances of such framework. We take advantage of this formalization in this work to construct our tag contract theory.…”

Section: Theory Of Interface and Contractmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We consider a simplified version of the water controlling system proposed by Benvenuti et al [8]. It consists of two components: a water tank and a water level controller, connected in a closed-loop fashion.…”

Section: Interoperable Tms and Composition Soundnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…a set of traces or runs) [7]. The differentiation between assumptions and guarantees, which is implicit in interface automata or modal specification, is made explicit in the trace-based contract framework of the SPEEDS HRC model [7,8]. Relevant notions such as composability, compatibility and dominance are formalized for contracts.…”

Section: Theory Of Interface and Contractmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A tag contract framework for modeling heterogeneous systems

Fahrenberg

Legay

2016

Science of Computer Programming

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In the distributed development of modern IT systems, contracts play a vital role in ensuring interoperability of components and adherence to specifications. The design of embedded systems, however, is made more complex by the heterogeneous nature of components, which are often described using different models and interaction mechanisms. Composing such components is generally not well-defined, making design and verification difficult. Several denotational frameworks have been proposed to handle heterogeneity using a variety of approaches. However, the application of heterogeneous modeling frameworks to contract-based design has not yet been investigated.In this work, we develop an operational model with precise heterogeneous denotational semantics, based on tag machines, that can represent heterogeneous composition, and provide conditions under which composition can be captured soundly and completely. The operational framework is implemented in a prototype tool which we use for experimental evaluation. We then construct a full contract model and introduce heterogeneous composition, refinement, dominance, and compatibility between contracts, altogether enabling a formalized and rigorous design process for heterogeneous systems. Besides, we also develop a generic algebraic method to synthesize or refine a set of contracts so that their composition satisfies a given contract.

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Section: Theory Of Interface and Contractmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Interoperable Tms and Composition Soundnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theory Of Interface and Contractmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A tag contract framework for modeling heterogeneous systems

Fahrenberg

Legay

2016

Science of Computer Programming

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“…The example, a Water Flow Control system, was first proposed by the Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) in the context of the SPEEDS project, and has been analyzed using hybrid modeling techniques [5]. Here we present a version using a continuous model to highlight the use of contracts in a familiar, equation-based notation.…”

Section: Control Design and Contracts With An Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 Its characteristic V-shape splits the product development process into a design and an integration phase. Specifically, following product level requirement analysis, subsequent steps would first evolve a functional architecture supporting product level requirements.…”

Section: ) Layered Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taming Dr. Frankenstein: Contract-Based Design for Cyber-Physical Systems*

Sangiovanni-Vincentelli

Damm

Passerone

2012

European Journal of Control

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273

253

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Abstract-Cyber-physical systems combine a cyber side (computing and networking) with a physical side (mechanical, electrical, and chemical processes). In many cases, the cyber component controls the physical side using sensors and actuators that observe the physical system and actuate the controls. Such systems present the biggest challenges as well as the biggest opportunities in several large industries, including electronics, energy, automotive, defense and aerospace, telecommunications, instrumentation, industrial automation.Engineers today do successfully design cyber-physical systems in a variety of industries. Unfortunately, the development of systems is costly, and development schedules are difficult to stick to. The complexity of cyber-physical systems, and particularly the increased performance that is offered from interconnecting what in the past have been separate systems, increases the design and verification challenges. As the complexity of these systems increases, our inability to rigorously model the interactions between the physical and the cyber sides creates serious vulnerabilities. Systems become unsafe, with disastrous inexplicable failures that could not have been predicted. Distributed control of multi-scale complex systems is largely an unsolved problem.A common view that is emerging in research programs in Europe and the US is "enabling contract-based design (CBD)," which formulates a broad and aggressive scope to address urgent needs in the systems industry. We present a design methodology and a few examples in controller design whereby contractbased design can be merged with platform-based design to formulate the design process as a meet-in-the-middle approach, where design requirements are implemented in a subsequent refinement process using as much as possible elements from a library of available components. Contracts are formalizations of the conditions for correctness of element integration (horizontal contracts), for lower level of abstraction to be consistent with the higher ones, and for abstractions of available components to be faithful representations of the actual parts (vertical contracts).

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Assume–guarantee verification of nonlinear hybrid systems with Ariadne

Benvenuti

Bresolin

Collins

et al. 2012

Intl J Robust & Nonlinear

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SUMMARYIn many applicative fields, there is the need to model and design complex systems having a mixed discrete and continuous behavior that cannot be characterized faithfully using either discrete or continuous models only. Such systems consist of a discrete control part that operates in a continuous environment and are named hybrid systems because of their mixed nature. Unfortunately, most of the verification problems for hybrid systems, like reachability analysis, turn out to be undecidable. Because of this, many approximation techniques and tools to estimate the reachable set have been proposed in the literature. However, most of the tools are unable to handle nonlinear dynamics and constraints and have restrictive licenses. To overcome these limitations, we recently proposed an open-source framework for hybrid system verification, called ARIADNE, which exploits approximation techniques based on the theory of computable analysis for implementing formal verification algorithms. In this paper, we will show how the approximation capabilities of ARIADNE can be used to verify complex hybrid systems, adopting an assume-guarantee reasoning approach.

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A contract-based formalism for the specification of heterogeneous systems

Cited by 36 publications

References 5 publications

A tag contract framework for modeling heterogeneous systems

A tag contract framework for modeling heterogeneous systems

Taming Dr. Frankenstein: Contract-Based Design for Cyber-Physical Systems*

Assume–guarantee verification of nonlinear hybrid systems with Ariadne

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