Scientific publications

A Domain Specific Language (DSL) focuses on the essential concepts in a certain problem domain, thus abstracting from low-level implementation details. In combination with code generators, DSLs bring software development closer to domain requirements. The development of DSLs usually centers around the grammar and a code generator; there is little attention for the semantics of the DSL.

Exploration of design alternatives and estimation of their key performance metrics such as latency and energy consumption is essential for making the proper design decisions in the early phases of system development. Often, highlevel models of the dynamic behavior of the system are used for the analysis of design alternatives.

Nowadays the maritime operational picture is characterised by a growing number of entities whose interactions and activities are constantly changing. To provide timely support in this dynamic environment, automated systems need to be equipped with tools—lacking in existing systems—for real-time prioritisation of the application tasks (missions), selection and alignment of relevant information, and efficient reasoning at a situation level.

Using a well-known industrial case study from the verification literature, the bounded retransmission protocol, we show how active learning can be used to establish the correctness of protocol implementation I relative to a given reference implementation R. Using active learning, we learn a model M R of reference implementation R, which serves as input for a model-based testing tool that checks conformance of implementation I to M R .

Node mobility is a key feature of using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in many sensory applications, such as healthcare. The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol should properly support the mobility in the network. In particular, mobility is complicated for contention-free protocols like Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA).

We report about experiences at Philips Healthcare with component-based development supported by formal techniques. The formal Analytical Software Design (ASD) approach of the company Verum has been incorporated into the industrial workflow. The commercial tool ASD:Suite supports both compositional verification and code generation for control components.

Analyzing worst-case application timing for systems with shared resources is difficult, especially when non-monotonic arbitration policies like First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) scheduling are used in combination with varying task execution times. Analysis methods that conservatively analyze these systems are often based on state-space exploration, which is not scalable due to its inherent susceptibility to combinatorial explosion.

Gossip-based Wireless Sensor Networks (GWSNs) are complex systems of inherently random nature. Planning and designing GWSNs requires a fast and adequately accurate mechanism to estimate system performance. As a first contribution, we propose a performance analysis technique that simulates the gossip-based propagation of each single piece of data in isolation.

The warehouse system sales process leads from a specific customer request to a specific customer quotation. This process of configuring a warehouse system with existing components involves a sequence of steps which contain increasingly more details. In this chapter, it is shown by two examples that easy-to-use essential system simulation models can be applied early in the sales process with a good cost/benefit ratio.

Borate ester compounds are emerging as promising materials for lubricating systems. The main drawback of borate esters however, is the susceptiblity to hydrolysis. In this work, two kinds of N-containing heterocyclic borate esters were synthesized. Their hydrolytic stability and tribological properties as lubricant additives in rapeseed oil were evaluated.