Formal Verification of Real-Time Wireless Sensor Networks Protocols with Realistic Radio Links
Abstract
Many critical applications which rely on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are proposed. Forest fire detection, land- slide detection and intrusion detection are some examples. Critical applications require correct behavior, reliability, and the respect of time constraints. Otherwise, if they fail, con- sequences on human life and the environment could be catas- trophic. For this reason, the WSN protocols used in these applications must be formally verified. Unfortunately the radio link is unreliable, it is thus difficult to give hard guar- antees on the temporal behavior of the protocols (on wired systems the link error probability is very low [7], so they are considered reliable). Indeed, a message may experience a very high number of retransmissions. The temporal guaran- tee has thus to be given with a probability that it is achieved. This probability must meet the requirements of the applica- tion. Network protocols have been successfully verified on a given network topology without taking into account unre- liable links. Nevertheless, the probabilistic nature of radio links may change the topology (links which appear and dis- appear). Thus instead of a single topology we have a set of possible topologies, each topology having a probability to exist. In this paper, we propose a method that produces the set of topologies, checks the property on every topology, and gives the probability that the property is verified. This technique is independent from the verification technique, i.e. each topology can be verified using any formal method which can give a "yes" or "no" answer to the question: "Does the model of the protocol respect the property?". In this paper we apply this method on f-MAC [23] pro- tocol. F-MAC is a real-time medium access protocol for WSNs. We use UPPAAL model checker [10] as verification tool. We perform simulations to observe the difference be- tween average and worst case behaviors.
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