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A Contract-Based Semantics and Refinement for Simulink

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Dependable Software Engineering. Theories, Tools, and Applications (SETTA 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13649))

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Abstract

Simulink is a widely used tool for modelling, simulating, and analyzing cyber-physical systems using block diagrams. Such diagrams contain both discrete-time and continuous-time blocks. To analyze complex block diagrams, a semantics to support compositional reasoning and verification is required. Contract-based modelling provides good compositional reasoning about complex systems. In this paper, we present a contract-based semantic model for Simulink to formalise the semantics of both discrete-time and continuous-time blocks. In our semantic formalisation, the semantics of a block is defined as a contract, and we define five operations on contracts, which are sequential composition, parallel composition, feedback composition, variable renaming, and variable hiding. We then define the refinement relation among the Simulink diagrams.

This work was funded in part by the Chongqing Graduate Research and Innovation Project (grant No. CYB20098), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62032019, 61732019, 61672435, 62002298), and the Capacity Development Grant of Southwest University (SWU116007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Quan Sun

  2. College of Computer and Information Science, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

    Wei Zhang, Chao Wang & Zhiming Liu

  3. School of Software, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

    Zhiming Liu

Authors
  1. Quan Sun
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  2. Wei Zhang
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  3. Chao Wang
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  4. Zhiming Liu
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Correspondence to Zhiming Liu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

    Wei Dong

  2. Inria, Rennes, France

    Jean-Pierre Talpin

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Sun, Q., Zhang, W., Wang, C., Liu, Z. (2022). A Contract-Based Semantics and Refinement for Simulink. In: Dong, W., Talpin, JP. (eds) Dependable Software Engineering. Theories, Tools, and Applications. SETTA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13649. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21213-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21213-0_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-21212-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-21213-0

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