On the Complexity of Verification of Time-Sensitive Distributed Systems: Technical Report

Abstract: This paper develops a Multiset Rewriting language with explicit time for the specification and analysis of Time-Sensitive Distributed Systems (TSDS). Goals are often specified using explicit time constraints. A good trace is an infinite trace in which the goals are satisfied perpetually despite possible interference from the environment. In our previous work (FORMATS 2016), we discussed two desirable properties of TSDSes, realizability (there exists a good trace) and survivability (where, in addition, all admissible traces are good). Here we consider two additional properties, recoverability (all compliant traces do not reach points-of-no-return) and reliability (the system can always continue functioning using a good trace). Following (FORMATS 2016), we focus on a class of systems called Progressing Timed Systems (PTS), where intuitively only a finite number of actions can be carried out in a bounded time period. We prove that for this class of systems the properties of recoverability and reliability coincide and are PSPACE-complete. Moreover, if we impose a bound on time (as in bounded model-checking), we show that for PTS the reliability property is in the $\Pi_2^p$ class of the polynomial hierarchy, a subclass of PSPACE. We also show that the bounded survivability is both NP-hard and coNP-hard.