Continuous Verification of Large Embedded Software Using SMT-Based Bounded Model Checking

Abstract

The complexity of software in embedded systems has increased significantly over the last years so that software verification now plays an important role in ensuring the overall product quality. In this context, bounded model checking has been successfully applied to discover subtle errors, but for larger applications, it often suffers from the state space explosion problem. This paper describes a new approach called continuous verification to detect design errors as quickly as possible by exploiting information from the software configuration management system and by combining dynamic and static verification to reduce the state space to be explored. We also give a set of encodings that provide accurate support for program verification and use different background theories in order to improve scalability and precision in a completely automatic way. A case study from the telecommunications domain shows that the proposed approach improves the error-detection capability and reduces the overall verification time by up to 50%.