A Tool for the Syntactic Detection of Zeno-timelocks in Timed Automata

Timed automata are a very successful notation for specifying and verifying real-time systems, but timelocks can freely arise. These are counter-intuitive situations in which a specifier's description of a component automaton can inadvertently prevent time from passing beyond a certain point, possibly making the entire system stop. In particular, a zeno-timelock represents a situation where infinite computation is performed in a finite period of time. Zeno-timelocks are very hard to detect for real-time model checkers, e.g. UPPAAL and Kronos. We have developed a tool which can take an UPPAAL model as input and return a number of loops which can potentially cause zeno-timelocks. This tool implements an algorithm which refines a static verification approach introduced by Tripakis. We illustrate the use of this tool on a real-life case-study, the CSMA/CD protocol.