Games, Time, and Probability: Graph Models for System Design and Analysis

Digital technology is increasingly deployed in safety-critical situations. This calls for systematic design and verification methodologies that can cope with three major sources of system complexity: concurrency, real time, and uncertainty. We advocate a two-step process: formal modeling followed by algorithmic analysis (or, “model building” followed by “model checking”). We model the concurrent components of a reactive system as potential collaborators or adversaries in a multi-player game with temporal objectives, such as system safety. The real-time aspect of embedded systems requires models that combine discrete state transitions and continuous state evolutions. Uncertainty in the environment is naturally modeled by probabilistic state changes. As a result, we obtain three orthogonal extensions of the basic state-transition graph model for reactive systems —game graphs, timed graphs, and stochastic graphs— as well as combinations thereof. In this short text, we provide...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SOFSEM
• Authors: Thomas A. Henzinger
• Keywords: Graph Model, Graph Represent, SOFSEM 2007, State Transitions, Theoretical Computer Science