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R. Ehrig, T. Dierkes, S. Schaefer, S. Roeblitz, E. Tronci, T. Mancini, I. Salvo, V. Alimguzhin, F. Mari, I. Melatti et al. "An integrative approach for model driven computation of treatments in reproductive medicine." In Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Mathematical and Computational Biology (BIOMAT 2015), Rorkee, India., 2015. DOI: 10.1142/9789813141919_0005.
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T. Mancini, I. Melatti, and E. Tronci. "Any-horizon uniform random sampling and enumeration of constrained scenarios for simulation-based formal verification." IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (2021): 1. ISSN: 1939-3520. Notes: To appear. DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2021.3109842.
Abstract: Model-based approaches to the verification of non-terminating Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) usually rely on numerical simulation of the System Under Verification (SUV) model under input scenarios of possibly varying duration, chosen among those satisfying given constraints. Such constraints typically stem from requirements (or assumptions) on the SUV inputs and its operational environment as well as from the enforcement of additional conditions aiming at, e.g., prioritising the (often extremely long) verification activity, by, e.g., focusing on scenarios explicitly exercising selected requirements, or avoiding </i>vacuity</i> in their satisfaction. In this setting, the possibility to efficiently sample at random (with a known distribution, e.g., uniformly) within, or to efficiently enumerate (possibly in a uniformly random order) scenarios among those satisfying all the given constraints is a key enabler for the practical viability of the verification process, e.g., via simulation-based statistical model checking. Unfortunately, in case of non-trivial combinations of constraints, iterative approaches like Markovian random walks in the space of sequences of inputs in general fail in extracting scenarios according to a given distribution (e.g., uniformly), and can be very inefficient to produce at all scenarios that are both legal (with respect to SUV assumptions) and of interest (with respect to the additional constraints). For example, in our case studies, up to 91% of the scenarios generated using such iterative approaches would need to be neglected. In this article, we show how, given a set of constraints on the input scenarios succinctly defined by multiple finite memory monitors, a data structure (scenario generator) can be synthesised, from which any-horizon scenarios satisfying the input constraints can be efficiently extracted by (possibly uniform) random sampling or (randomised) enumeration. Our approach enables seamless support to virtually all simulation-based approaches to CPS verification, ranging from simple random testing to statistical model checking and formal (i.e., exhaustive) verification, when a suitable bound on the horizon or an iterative horizon enlargement strategy is defined, as in the spirit of bounded model checking.
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I. Melatti, F. Mari, T. Mancini, M. Prodanovic, and E. Tronci. "A Two-Layer Near-Optimal Strategy for Substation Constraint Management via Home Batteries." IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (2021): 1. Notes: To appear. DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2021.3102431.
Abstract: Within electrical distribution networks, substation constraints management requires that aggregated power demand from residential users is kept within suitable bounds. Efficiency of substation constraints management can be measured as the reduction of constraints violations w.r.t. unmanaged demand. Home batteries hold the promise of enabling efficient and user-oblivious substation constraints management. Centralized control of home batteries would achieve optimal efficiency. However, it is hardly acceptable by users, since service providers (e.g., utilities or aggregators) would directly control batteries at user premises. Unfortunately, devising efficient hierarchical control strategies, thus overcoming the above problem, is far from easy. We present a novel two-layer control strategy for home batteries that avoids direct control of home devices by the service provider and at the same time yields near-optimal substation constraints management efficiency. Our simulation results on field data from 62 households in Denmark show that the substation constraints management efficiency achieved with our approach is at least 82% of the one obtained with a theoretical optimal centralized strategy.
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Q. M. Chen, A. Finzi, T. Mancini, I. Melatti, and E. Tronci. "MILP, Pseudo-Boolean, and OMT Solvers for Optimal Fault-Tolerant Placements of Relay Nodes in Mission Critical Wireless Networks." Fundamenta Informaticae 174 (2020): 229–258. IOS Press. ISSN: 1875-8681. DOI: 10.3233/FI-2020-1941.
Abstract: In critical infrastructures like airports, much care has to be devoted in protecting radio communication networks from external electromagnetic interference. Protection of such mission-critical radio communication networks is usually tackled by exploiting radiogoniometers: at least three suitably deployed radiogoniometers, and a gateway gathering information from them, permit to monitor and localise sources of electromagnetic emissions that are not supposed to be present in the monitored area. Typically, radiogoniometers are connected to the gateway through relay nodes . As a result, some degree of fault-tolerance for the network of relay nodes is essential in order to offer a reliable monitoring. On the other hand, deployment of relay nodes is typically quite expensive. As a result, we have two conflicting requirements: minimise costs while guaranteeing a given fault-tolerance. In this paper, we address the problem of computing a deployment for relay nodes that minimises the overall cost while at the same time guaranteeing proper working of the network even when some of the relay nodes (up to a given maximum number) become faulty (fault-tolerance ). We show that, by means of a computation-intensive pre-processing on a HPC infrastructure, the above optimisation problem can be encoded as a 0/1 Linear Program, becoming suitable to be approached with standard Artificial Intelligence reasoners like MILP, PB-SAT, and SMT/OMT solvers. Our problem formulation enables us to present experimental results comparing the performance of these three solving technologies on a real case study of a relay node network deployment in areas of the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome, Italy.
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T. Mancini, F. Mari, A. Massini, I. Melatti, and E. Tronci. "On Checking Equivalence of Simulation Scripts." Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming (2021): 100640. ISSN: 2352-2208. DOI: 10.1016/j.jlamp.2021.100640.
Abstract: To support Model Based Design of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) many simulation based approaches to System Level Formal Verification (SLFV) have been devised. Basically, these are Bounded Model Checking approaches (since simulation horizon is of course bounded) relying on simulators to compute the system dynamics and thereby verify the given system properties. The main obstacle to simulation based SLFV is the large number of simulation scenarios to be considered and thus the huge amount of simulation time needed to complete the verification task. To save on computation time, simulation based SLFV approaches exploit the capability of simulators to save and restore simulation states. Essentially, such a time saving is obtained by optimising the simulation script defining the simulation activity needed to carry out the verification task. Although such approaches aim to (bounded) formal verification, as a matter of fact, the proof of correctness of the methods to optimise simulation scripts basically relies on an intuitive semantics for simulation scripting languages. This hampers the possibility of formally showing that the optimisations introduced to speed up the simulation activity do not actually omit checking of relevant behaviours for the system under verification. The aim of this paper is to fill the above gap by presenting an operational semantics for simulation scripting languages and by proving soundness and completeness properties for it. This, in turn, enables formal proofs of equivalence between unoptimised and optimised simulation scripts.
Keywords: Formal verification, Simulation based formal verification, Formal Verification of cyber-physical systems, System-level formal verification
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T. Mancini, F. Mari, A. Massini, I. Melatti, I. Salvo, S. Sinisi, E. Tronci, R. Ehrig, S. Röblitz, and B. Leeners. "Computing Personalised Treatments through In Silico Clinical Trials. A Case Study on Downregulation in Assisted Reproduction." In 25th RCRA International Workshop on “Experimental Evaluation of Algorithms for Solving Problems with Combinatorial Explosion” (RCRA 2018)., 2018. DOI: 10.29007/g864.
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T. Mancini, F. Mari, I. Melatti, I. Salvo, E. Tronci, J. Gruber, B. Hayes, M. Prodanovic, and L. Elmegaard. "Parallel Statistical Model Checking for Safety Verification in Smart Grids." In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm), 1–6., 2018. DOI: 10.1109/SmartGridComm.2018.8587416.
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T. Mancini, F. Mari, A. Massini, I. Melatti, and E. Tronci. "SyLVaaS: System Level Formal Verification as a Service." Fundamenta Informaticae 149, no. 1-2 (2016): 101–132. DOI: 10.3233/FI-2016-1444.
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B. P. Hayes, I. Melatti, T. Mancini, M. Prodanovic, and E. Tronci. "Residential Demand Management using Individualised Demand Aware Price Policies." IEEE Transactions On Smart Grid 8, no. 3 (2017): 1284–1294. DOI: 10.1109/TSG.2016.2596790.
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. Model Based Synthesis of Control Software from System Level Formal Specifications. Vol. abs/1107.5638. CoRR, Technical Report, 2013.
Abstract: Many Embedded Systems are indeed Software Based Control Systems, that is control systems whose controller consists of control software running on a microcontroller device. This motivates investigation on Formal Model Based Design approaches for automatic synthesis of embedded systems control software.
We present an algorithm, along with a tool QKS implementing it, that from a formal model (as a Discrete Time Linear Hybrid System) of the controlled system (plant), implementation specifications (that is, number of bits in the Analog-to-Digital, AD, conversion) and System Level Formal Specifications (that is, safety and liveness requirements for the closed loop system) returns correct-by-construction control software that has a Worst Case Execution Time (WCET) linear in the number of AD bits and meets the given specifications.
We show feasibility of our approach by presenting experimental results on using it to synthesize control software for a buck DC-DC converter, a widely used mixed-mode analog circuit, and for the inverted pendulum.
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