Dynamic Networks of Timed Automata for collaborative systems: A network monitoring case study

We introduce Dynamic Networks of Timed Automata, an extension of (Networks of) Timed Automata useful for specifying concurrently executing timed-processes. The main difference with Timed Automata is that we allow the instantiation at run-time of multiple copies of automata. In this paper we also show an industrial case study where a system for monitoring a network of wireless devices is built applying Dynamic Networks of Timed Automata. The network is characterized by a high degree of dynamism, since its infrastructure is fixed but a big amount of its hosts continuously connect and disconnect. We see how extending XAL, an executable language for Timed Automata, we can first model our system, made of cooperating timed processes, and finally transform such model into an executable application. We also show how to model-check relevant properties of our application, expressing them through a temporal logic called TCTL and using existing formal methods and tools.