The focus for this detailed study is provided by the type of solid state signaling and various communication systems currently being deployed throughout mainline railways. Safety and system reliability concerns dominate in this domain.... more
The focus for this detailed study is provided by the type of solid state signaling and various communication systems currently being deployed throughout mainline railways. Safety and system reliability concerns dominate in this domain. With such motivation, two issues are tackled: the special problem of software quality assurance in these data-driven control systems, and the broader problem of design dependability. In the former case, the analysis is directed towards proving safety properties of the geographic data which encode the control logic for the railway interlocking; the latter examines the fidelity of the communication protocols upon which the distributed control system depends.