Model-based analysis of timing errors for reliable design of mechatronic medical devices
Thomas Mutzke, Kai Ding, Andrey S. Morozov, Klaus Janschek, Joel Braun · 2016
Concurrent processes of distributed systems might be not perfectly synchronized because of various design limitations. This is a potential cause of timing errors, e.g. a data package from a providing interface of one component reaches a required interface of another component too early or too late. A timing error may result in a data error that can propagate further and become a reason of a system failure. This paper introduces a comprehensive method for stochastic, model-based analysis of timing errors. Application of the method is demonstrated at a reference mechatronic system, a medical patient table, which is modeled with a baseline UML activity diagram. The paper introduces a method for automatic transformation of an annotated activity diagram into a formal generalized stochastic Petri net model. The reachability graph of the Petri net, weighted with transition probabilities, forms a discrete time Markov chain model, which is used for estimation of several reliability metrics related to timing errors.