Model checking dependability attributes of wireless group communication

Abstract

Models used for the analysis of dependability and performance attributes of communication protocols often abstract considerably from the details of the actual protocol. These models often consist of concurrent sub-models and this may make it hard to judge whether their behaviour is faithfully reflecting the protocol. In this paper, we show how model checking of continuous-time Markov chains, generated from high-level specifications, facilitates the analysis of both correctness and dependability attributes. We illustrate this by revisiting a dependability analysis as stated in A. Coccoli et al. (2001)of a variant of the central access protocol of the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless local area networks. This variant has been developed to support real-time group communication between autonomous mobile stations. Correctness and dependability properties are formally characterised using continuous stochastic logic and are automatically verified by the ETMCC model checker. The models used are specified as stochastic activity nets.