Safety Interlocking as a Distributed Mutual Exclusion Problem

Abstract

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Formal Methods for Distributed Computing in Future Railway Systems

“…Following an increasingly popular trend for Cyber-Physical Systems, a more dynamic network connection among mobile components can be envisaged, in which decisions are actually taken in a distributed fashion. An example is given by proposals of fully distributed interlocking systems, where the route reservation is a global concept to be negotiated between the nodes [10,5,6]. Another example is the virtual coupling concept, in which the strict cross-control between coupled trains has to be negotiated locally, while the global behavior of the set of coupled trains has to follow the rules dictated by the ETCS control system [15,9].…”

Formal Distributed Protocol Development for Reservation of Railway Sections

“…[9,13,24]). In principle all railway models share similar high-level safety, liveness and fairness requirements, as summarised on page 2 in [10]. One difference between our work and the studies overviewed in [10] is the interlocking engineering concept and the system model (e.g.…”

“…Therefore, it is also desirable that the framework should support model animation and scenario validation. It is also paramount that the framework should support quantitative evaluation; as stated by Fantechi and Haxthausen [10], distributed signalling solutions will only be adopted in practice if system availability is demonstrated. The authors (as discussed in [10]) of related researches did not consider liveness and fairness properties, which directly affect system availability.…”

“…Related Work. In Fantechi and Haxthausen [10] the authors formalise the railway interlocking problem as a distributed mutual exclusion problem and discuss the related literature on distributed interlocking (e.g. [9,13,24]).…”

Formal Modelling and Verification of a Distributed Railway Interlocking System Using UPPAAL

“…With this approach, the components communicate with each other in order to cooperate in controlling the trains and the switch points in the railway network. For a survey over different distributed control algorithms, see [11]. Although being a less expensive solution, the required communication also makes it more difficult to verify the safety of trains in the system.…”