A New Specification-based Qualitative Metric for Simulation Model Validity

Damien Foures (1) , Vincent Albert (1) , Alexandre Nketsa (1)

1 LAAS-ISI - Équipe Ingénierie Système et Intégration

Informal validation techniques such as simulation are extensively used in the development of embedded systems. Formal approaches such as model-checking and testing are important means to carry out Verification and Validation (V&V) activities. Model-checking consists in exploring all possible behaviours of a model in order to perform a qualitative and quantitative analysis. However, this method remains of limited use as it runs into the problem of combinatorial explosion. Testing and model-checking do not take into account the context of use objectives of the model. Simulation overcomes these problems but it is not exhaustive. Submitted to simulation scenarios which are an operational formulation of the V&V activity considered, simulation consists in exploring a subset of the state space of the model. This paper proposes a formal approach to assess simulation scenarios. The formal specification of a model and the simulation scenarios applied to that model serve to compute the effective evolutions taken by the simulation. It is then possible to check whether a simulation fulfils its intended purpose. To illustrate this approach, the application study of an intelligent cruise controller is presented. The main contribution of this paper is that combining simulation objectives and formal methods leads to define a qualitative metric for a simulation evaluation without running a simulation.

Mots clés: Experimental Frame; Abstraction; Input/Output Automata; Compatibility 2

Domaines: Systèmes embarqués; Modélisation et simulation; Génie logiciel [cs.SE]

Damien Foures, Vincent Albert, Alexandre Nketsa. A New Specification-based Qualitative Metric for Simulation Model Validity. Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, 2016, 66, pp.1-15. ⟨10.1016/j.simpat.2016.03.002⟩. ⟨hal-01816611⟩