Abstract
This paper presents a series of TLA+ specification/implementations that lead to an implementation of the retransmission policy of RLP1, the Radio Link Protocol proposed for TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) digital cellular radio. Both safety and liveness properties are proved for SWPInitial, a very abstract, but formal, specification of a sliding window protocol. The rest of the work consists of a series of refinements which finally result in a model of RLP1. Each refinement step is formally proved. In all cases the most difficult part of the proof is for liveness. We prove, formally and rigorously, and parametrised by the window size N, that the model of RLP1 obtained from the last refinement step is an implementation of the initial specification SWPInitial, and thus inherits safety and liveness properties proved for all the higherlevel specifications. The specifications are written in TLA+, a formal language based on TLA, and proofs are given in Lamport's hierarchical proof-style. Most proof steps are checked mechanically in Eves.
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Mokkedem, A., Ferguson, M.J., de Johnston, R. (1997). A TLA solution to the specification and verification of the RLP1 retransmission protocol. In: Fitzgerald, J., Jones, C.B., Lucas, P. (eds) FME '97: Industrial Applications and Strengthened Foundations of Formal Methods. FME 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1313. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_21
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