A framework for model-checking timed CSP

Timed CSP is a well-known process algebra, built as an extension to Hoare's original CSP, designed to handle concurrency combined with timing considerations. It achieves this over a continuous time domain (the non-negative real numbers), which has the drawback of precluding standard model-checking approaches, as the state-space of any process is naturally a priori (uncountably) infinite. This paper shows how to circumvent this problem by translating and reinterpreting timed CSP processes within a new model of standard CSP. In this discrete model, which draws on previous work by A.W. Roscoe (1997) and A. Mukkaram (1993), timing of events is provided by the consistent and regular communication of a special tock event, analogous to the 'tick' of a clock. The various parallel components of a process are therefore required to synchronise on tock, ensuring a uniform rate of passage of time. General results yielding tight bounds on the loss of information inherent to the translation are given.