Symbolic model checking for event-driven real-time systems

We consider symbolic model-checking for event-driven real-time systems. The concrete syntax of these systems is given in terms of a graphical programming language called Modechart. We propose a logic, Synchronous Real-Time Event logic (SREL) for specifying the timing properties of these systems. We then present a symbolic model-checking algorithm which checks a modechart against an SREL formula, and discuss several implementation issues. In particular, we give an efficient solution to the problem of encoding timing and event counting functions based on Binary Decision Diagram (BDD). This solution has been incorported into the SMV system v2.3 and has been able to achieve one to two orders of magnitude in speedup and space saving when compared to the solution based on the integer operations provided by the SMV system