Analysing timed Rebeca using McErlang

Abstract

Although timed actor-based models attracted more attention in the recent years, there is not much done on analyzing and model checking of such systems. The actor based language, Timed Rebeca, was introduced to model distributed and asynchronous systems with timing constraints, and a supporting tool was developed for automated translation of Timed Rebeca models to Erlang. The translated code can be executed using McErlang. In this paper, we propose extensions for Timed Rebeca language to improve the usability of the language. Designers can now develop models expressing more complex behaviors by calling Erlang custom functions and using lists. Moreover, to be able to use the new version of McErlang which supports timing constructs of Timed Rebeca we changed the mapping and the tool accordingly. This gives us the possibility of model checking and simulation of Timed Rebeca models for the first time. We can use the safety monitors in McErlang to verify safety properties in the model. Also, statistical methods are applied to the simulation results to reason about the system behavior. We examine the typical case study of elevators to show the applicability of our technique and tool.