Towards Model Checking Spatial Properties with SPIN

We present an approach for the verification of spatial properties with Spin. We first extend one of Spin’s main property specification mechanisms, i.e., the linear-time temporal logic LTL, with spatial connectives that allow us to restrict the reasoning of the behaviour of a system to some components of the system, only. For instance, one can express whether the system can reach a certain state from which a subset of processes can evolve alone until some property is fulfilled. We give a model checking algorithm for the logic and propose how Spin can be minimally extended to include the algorithm. We also discuss potential improvements to mitigate the exponential complexity introduced by spatial connectives. Finally, we present some experiments that compare our Spin extension with a spatial model checker for the π-calculus.