Requirements-based Monitors for Real-Time Systems

Dennis K. Peters

Abstract

Before designing safety- or mission-critical real-time systems, a specification of the required behaviour of the system should be produced and reviewed by domain experts. After the system has been implemented, it should be thoroughly tested to ensure that it behaves correctly. This is best done using a monitor, a system that observes the behaviour of a target system and reports if that behaviour is consistent with the requirements. Such a monitor can be used both as an oracle during testing and as a supervisor during operation. Monitors should be based on the documented requirements of the system.

This paper discusses design of monitors for real-time systems, and examines the conditions under which a monitor will produce false reports. We describe the conclusions that can be drawn when using a monitor to observe system behaviour.


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Last modified: Mon 2001.10.01 at 12:11 NDT by Dennis Peters