Quantifying fidelity for timed transition systems

The paper addresses one of the fundamental questions in using simulation as a means for system verification and validation, namely, how far the simulation model represents the transition timings of the real system. A formal quantification of this difference in transition timings of a simulation model with respect to the system specification is presented based on game theoretic distance notions from literature. In this two player game, simulation model tries to mimic the system's transitions and incurs a distance if it fails to match the timing of the transition. Fidelity of simulation model is presented through this distance notion based on the quantitative simulation relations and timed simulation game. This game between two timed transition systems is modelled in petri-net formalism and a quantitative reachability graph is generated using TINA tool embedded in ProDEVS simulation platform to explore all such player strategies. The resulting exhaustive exploration yields a global fidelity distribution of the simulation model in terms of transition timings which could be analysed in ProDEVS to gain further insight into the simulation model behaviour with respect to the system model. The approach is demonstrated on a buffer system modelling case study to validate a processor through simulation.