Model Checking the FlexRay Startup Phase

The FlexRay protocol is an upcoming standard in automotive industry. Its specification is finalised and maintained by ISO. It is a time-triggered protocol that uses a fault-tolerant clock synchronisation mechanism. During a startup phase that should be resilient to certain faults, the clocks in the network are synchronised and the protocol is initialised. This paper presents a model of the startup phase of the protocol in the mCRL2 modelling language, and shows how model checking techniques can be used to check that the startup protocol fulfills the requirements. A previously unknown scenario is uncovered in which a single failing node can cause another node, or even the entire network, not to start up.

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