Formal verification of redundant media extension of Ethernet PowerLink

The use of Ethernet at the field level seems to be the next step after traditional fieldbuses. Even if it was not used to be competitive compared to solutions designed for industrial purpose, Ethernet performances have increased faster. On the other hand, some special features like network availability solutions have not improved so much rapidly. Then faster Ethernet based industrial protocols had to specify accurate solutions. The objective of this paper is to validate the medium redundancy management part of the Ethernet PowerLink High Availability extension. For this, aimed application requirements are stated and the protocol with its extension are detailed. In the context of Alstom Power critical applications, the correctness of the solution of redundancy must be proven. Therefore, a model-checking approach is used from a generic modelling in timed finite state automata.