ASSUME-GUARANTEE REASONING WITH LOCAL SPECIFICATIONS

Abstract

We investigate assume-guarantee reasoning for global specifications consisting of conjunctions of local specifications. We present a sound and complete assume-guarantee methodology that enables us to establish properties of a composite system by checking local specifications of its individual modules. We illustrate our approach with an example from the field of network congestion control, where different agents are responsible for controlling packet flow across a shared infrastructure. In this context we derive an assume-guarantee system for network stability and show its efficiency to reason about any number of agents, any initial flow configuration, and any topology of bounded degree.