End-to-end formal specification, validation and verification process: a case study of space flight software

Download
Author
Alves, Miriam C. Bergue
Drusinsky, Doron
Michael, James Bret
Shing, Man-Tak
Date
2013-12Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The quality of requirements and the effectiveness of verification and validation (V&V) techniques in guaranteeing that a final system reflects its established requirements have a direct influence on the quality and dependability of the delivered system. The V&V process can be efficient from a managerial point of view, but ineffective from a technical perspective, and vice versa. This paper presents an end-to-end formal computer-aided specification, validation, and verification (SV&V) process, whose feasibility and effectiveness were evaluated against the flight software for the Brazilian Satellite Launcher. Unified modeling language (UML) statechart assertions, scenario-based validation, and runtime verification are used to formally specify and verify the system, and metrics of the ongoing process and its V&V results are collected during the application of the process. The results of the case study indicate that the process and its computer-aided environment were both technically feasible to apply and managerially effective, will likely scale well to cater to SV&V of mission-critical systems that have a larger number of behavioral requirements, and can be used for V&V in a distributed development environment.
Description
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2012.2220591
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
A validation metrics framework for safety-critical software-intensive systems
Cruickshank, Kristian John. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2009-03);Validation of safety-critical software requirements is a difficult and frequently misunderstood task. It answers the question of "are we building the right product?" and is essential to Software Engineering. However, ... -
UML-based specification, validation, and log-file based verification of the Orion Pad Abort Software
Drusinsky, Doron (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2010-05-15); NPS-CS-10-007This paper described the first end to end application of a novel light weight formal specification, validation, and verification technique. The technique is novel is two aspects. First, it uses an intuitive, familiar, and ... -
Applying UML-based Formal Specification, Validation, and Verification to Space Flight Control System and Defense Software
Alves, Miriam C. Bergue; Beylin, Konstantin; Drusinsky, Doron; Michael, James Bret; Shing, Man-Tak (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2011-02-01); NPS-CS-11-003This report presents the process and results of a formal computer-aided Specification, Validation and Verification (SV&V) of two mission and safety critical projects: the Brazilian Satellite Launcher flight software, and ...