Abstract
Programmers often use informal worst-case analysis and debugging to ensure that schedulers satisfy real-time requirements. Not only can this process be tedious and error-prone, it is inherently conservative and thus likely to lead to an inefficient use of resources. We propose to use model checking to find a schedule which optimizes the use of resources while satisfying real-time requirements. Specifically, we represent a Wireless sensor and actuator network (WSAN) as a collection of actors whose behaviors are specified using a Java-based actor language extended with operators for real-time scheduling and delay representation. We show how the abstraction mechanism and the compositionality of actors in the actor model may be used to incrementally build a model of a WSAN’s behavior from node-level and network models. We demonstrate the approach with a case study of a distributed real-time data acquisition system for high-frequency sensing using Timed Rebeca modeling language and the Afra model checking tool.
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Notes
In this paper, we use rebec and actor interchangeably.
The Timed Rebeca code of this case study, some complimentary shell scripts, the model checking toolset, and the details of the specifications of the state spaces in different configurations are accessible from the Rebeca homepage [29].
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Acknowledgements
The work on this paper has been supported in part by the project “Self-Adaptive Actors: SEADA” (nr. 163205-051) of the Icelandic Research Fund, by Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under agreement number FA8750-11-2-0084, and by National Science Foundation under grant number CCF-1438982. The US Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon.
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Khamespanah, E., Sirjani, M., Mechitov, K. et al. Modeling and analyzing real-time wireless sensor and actuator networks using actors and model checking. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 20, 547–561 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-017-0480-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-017-0480-3