Atomic broadcast: a case study in locative temporal logic

Abstract

Locative temporal logic (LTL) has been developed for the specification and verification of distributed real time systems. It is a two-sorted modal logic in the sense that linear time temporal logic has been extended by a locative sort modelling communication networks. In its intended application area, LTL is more intuitive and adequate than other observer-based approaches because it is moulded after the paradigm of an external observer in space and time. To demonstrate the basic ideas and concepts of LTL and to give persuasive power to our claim above, we shall present, in this paper, a suitable version of LTL and provide service and protocol specifications in LTL for the well-known paradigm of atomic broadcast in a distributed real-time system. Finally, rue give some intuition for the correctness proof, i.e., a proof that a distributed real-time program implementing the protocol specification satisfies the service specification.<>