The FerroCOTS project aims at replacing relay panels of railway command-control systems with Comm... more The FerroCOTS project aims at replacing relay panels of railway command-control systems with Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components that use high-speed Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) digital devices. COTS technology is cost-saving, easily maintained and much more flexible when the system functions need to be updated. However, the lack of proper system specification and verification methods is a huge obstacle to developing these kinds of systems. In this paper, we propose a systematic requirement refinement method for embedded railway control systems. This method provides requirement traceability mechanisms, whenever the refinement process must be backtracked. CTL* logic is chosen as the formal specification framework of our refinement process. Based on these formal specifications, we present a conformance testing framework for generating test cases. These test cases are transformed automatically into VHDL test benches for simulation. The requirement refinement method is il...
International Journal of Soft Computing and Software Engineering, 2012
Systems' requirements are usually written in a natural language since it generally means a greate... more Systems' requirements are usually written in a natural language since it generally means a greater understanding among the various stakeholders. However, using an informal language potentially gives rise to interpretation problems, which are to be resolved prior to using (automated) verification techniques. This article tackles an important issue pertaining to requirement engineering: how to guide and help requirements' formalization? In order to support the formalization process, we propose a methodology based on a formal structure, which is the corner stone of the refinement process. The operating mode of the refinement process is highly iterative: the aforementioned structure is constructed incrementally until its validity is formally obtained. Although this process is formally backed up, it is a fundamentally subjective one, which means that interpretation errors can still occur. In case of errors, it is essential to be able to backtrack refinements until an interpretation error is found. This is why we require that each refinement be associated with a justification which may subsequently be analyzed in case an error occurred during the verification phase. This formalization process was designed to be used alongside an (unspecific) engineering process, in charge of the implementation. Once the formalization is complete, it is checked against the implementation using testing techniques, or directly against an implementation model via model-checking.
The FerroCOTS project aims at replacing relay panels of railway command-control systems with Comm... more The FerroCOTS project aims at replacing relay panels of railway command-control systems with Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components that use high-speed Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) digital devices. COTS technology is cost-saving, easily maintained and much more flexible when the system functions need to be updated. However, the lack of proper system specification and verification methods is a huge obstacle to developing these kinds of systems. In this paper, we propose a systematic requirement refinement method for embedded railway control systems. This method provides requirement traceability mechanisms, whenever the refinement process must be backtracked. CTL* logic is chosen as the formal specification framework of our refinement process. Based on these formal specifications, we present a conformance testing framework for generating test cases. These test cases are transformed automatically into VHDL test benches for simulation. The requirement refinement method is il...
International Journal of Soft Computing and Software Engineering, 2012
Systems' requirements are usually written in a natural language since it generally means a greate... more Systems' requirements are usually written in a natural language since it generally means a greater understanding among the various stakeholders. However, using an informal language potentially gives rise to interpretation problems, which are to be resolved prior to using (automated) verification techniques. This article tackles an important issue pertaining to requirement engineering: how to guide and help requirements' formalization? In order to support the formalization process, we propose a methodology based on a formal structure, which is the corner stone of the refinement process. The operating mode of the refinement process is highly iterative: the aforementioned structure is constructed incrementally until its validity is formally obtained. Although this process is formally backed up, it is a fundamentally subjective one, which means that interpretation errors can still occur. In case of errors, it is essential to be able to backtrack refinements until an interpretation error is found. This is why we require that each refinement be associated with a justification which may subsequently be analyzed in case an error occurred during the verification phase. This formalization process was designed to be used alongside an (unspecific) engineering process, in charge of the implementation. Once the formalization is complete, it is checked against the implementation using testing techniques, or directly against an implementation model via model-checking.
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Papers by Florent Peres