author: Sybe van Hijum
title: Symbolic Model Checking of Timed Automata
keywords: decision diagram, timed automata, symbolic
topics: Algorithms and Data Structures
committee: Jaco van de Pol ,
Arnd Hartmanns ,
Rom Langerak ,
Jeroen Meijer
started: February 2016
end: September 2016
type: MTV Master Project

Abstract

Timed automata are a modelling formalism adding the continuous field of time to discrete automata. We specifically aim at the model checking methods for these automata. We aimed at a symbolic ap- proach which uses a diagram that stores both the discrete and con- tinuous time variables. We used models created by the Uppaal model checking tool set. The opaal model checker is used to read these models and making them accessible to LTSmin.

The first solution only changes the language module and uses the standard symbolic model checking algorithms. This results in a correct solution for model checking of timed automata. The second method uses a different symbolic structure to store the state-space, Difference Decision Diagrams. This structure is defined specifically to store clock guards. A third solution, that is only mentioned briefly, uses the ex- plicit state methods, and the adapted language module that was de- signed for the symbolic approaches.

We present an extensive set of experiments. All results are com- pared to both the original Uppaal model checker and the original ex- plicit state method in LTSmin. All experiments are executed using several different search-orders, reorderings an other options.

An important part of this work is the future work section. We created a basic model checker, on which extensions and improvements can be built. To create a model checker that can compete with other state of the art tools these improvements are needed. 

 

Additional Resources

  1. The paper