Transducer-Based Algorithmic Verification of Retransmission Protocols over Noisy Channels

Unreliable communication channels are a practical reality. They add to the complexity of protocol design and verification. In this paper, we consider noisy channels which can corrupt messages. We present an approach to model and verify protocols which combine error detection and error control to provide reliable communication over noisy channels. We call these protocols retransmission protocols as they achieve reliable communication through repeated retransmissions of messages. These protocols typically use cyclic redundancy checks and sliding window protocols for error detection and control respectively. We propose models of these protocols as regular transducers operating on bit strings. Streaming string transducers provide a natural way of modeling these protocols and formalizing correctness requirements. The verification problem is posed as functional equivalence between the protocol transducer and the specification transducer. Functional equivalence checking is decidable for this class of transducers and this makes the transducer models amenable to algorithmic verification. We present case studies based on TinyOS serial communication and the HDLC retransmission protocol.