Formal specification and verification of protocol-based handover in a mobile process

In a current mobile computing system or future UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) environment, some nodes change locations, and are therefore connected to different other nodes at different points in time; cooperation between neighbouring nodes can be described in a way similar to the handover process based on communication protocols. We investigate how to specify a semantic model of protocol-based handover. We specify formally the protocol-based handover using RAISE specification language (RSL), and the RSL specifications are verified by the type checker of the RSL toolset. Finally, we simulate and verify the handover process using XSpin as a model checker for our specifications.