Formal analysis of pervasive computing systems

• Main Authors: LIU, Yan, ZHANG, Xian, DONG, Jin Song, LIU, Yang, SUN, Jun, BISWAS, Jit, MOKHTARI, Mounir
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: Pervasive Computing; Formal Modeling; System Verification; Databases and Information Systems; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6065; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7068/viewcontent/ICECCS_2012.dvi.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Pervasive computing systems are heterogenous and complex as they usually involve human activities, various sensors and actuators as well as middleware for system controlling. Therefore, analyzing such systems is highly nontrivial. In this work, we propose to use formal methods for analyzing pervasive computing systems. Firstly, a formal modeling framework is proposed to cover the main characteristics of pervasive computing systems (e.g., context-awareness, concurrent communications, layered architectures). Secondly, we identify the safety requirements (e.g., free of deadlocks and conflicts etc.) and propose their specifications as safety and liveness properties. Finally, we demonstrate our ideas using a case study of a smart nursing home system. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our approach in exploring system behaviors and revealing system design flaws such as information inconsistency and conflicting reminder services.