Formal Analysis of Pervasive Computing Systems

Abstract

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.

Design-time formal verification for smart environments: an exploratory perspective

“…Further, the interaction modeling seems to be largely covered by the techniques; user identification and action, and based on them the operations which could be performed are major focus of interaction modeling. Leaving aside Liu et al ((Liu et al, 2012)), no other technique seems holistic and global in its nature. They consider one or the other component of SmE with the control and model it; mostly the user.…”

“…In (Liu et al, 2012), the authors propose the use of formal methods to analyze the pervasive computing systems. They start with proposing a formal modeling framework for covering the main characteristics of pervasive computing systems.…”

“…Boytsov and Zaslavsky (Boytsov and Zaslavsky, 2013) Corno and Sanaullah Sanaullah, 2011a,b, 2013) Coronato and Pietro Pietro, 2010a,b, 2011) Gnesi et al (Gnesi et al, 1999) Gnesi and Mazzanti (Gnesi and Mazzanti, 2004) Hoogendoorn et al (Hoogendoorn et al, 2009(Hoogendoorn et al, , 2013 Ishikawa et al (Ishikawa et al, 2009) Leelaprute et al (Leelaprute et al, 2005) Liu et al (Liu et al, 2012) (Masci et al, 2012(Masci et al, , 2013a Ranganathan and Campbell (Ranganathan and Campbell, 2008) challenging conditions such as versatile user behaviors, malfunctioning sensors, broken or out-of-order devices, which may compromise reliable response of the system. To cater to such scenarios, probabilistic modeling and verification is usually performed.…”

User constraints for reliable user-defined smart home scenarios

“…Another application of model checking to intelligent environment was proposed by Liu et al [27]. They propose a modeling framework to help detect errors in the development of such environments.…”