Verification of Symbolic Distributed Protocols for Networked Embedded Devices

The availability of versatile and interconnected embedded devices makes it possible to build low-cost networks with a large number of nodes running even complex applications and protocols in a distributed manner. Common tools used for modeling and verification, such as simulators, present some limitations as application correctness is checked off-board and only focuses on source code. Execution in the real network is thus excluded from the early stages of design and verification. In this paper, a system for modeling and verification of symbolic distributed protocols running on embedded devices is introduced. The underlying methodology is rooted in a symbolic programming paradigm that makes it possible to model protocols with a high level of abstraction still permitting their execution on resource-constrained devices. The preliminary experimental results shown in this paper concern verification of a distributed averaging protocol in a simulated network at increasing number of nodes. The results support the feasibility of the approach to test distributed applications running on large networks of resource- constrained nodes.