Timing coverification of concurrent embedded real-time systems

Abstract

Hardware-software codesign results of concurrent embedded real-time systems are often not easily verifiable. The main difficulty lies in the different time-scales of the embedded hardware, of the embedded software, and of the environment. This rate difference causes state-space explosions and hence coverification has been mostly restricted to the initial system specifications. Currently, most codesign tools or methodologies only support validation in the form of cosimulation and testing. Here, we propose a new formal coverification method based on linear hybrid automata. The basic problems found in most coverification tasks are presented and solved. For complex systems, a simplification strategy is proposed to attack state-space explosions in formal coverification. Experimental results show the feasibility of our approach and the increase in verification scalability through the application of the proposed method.