In: 11th Annual International Symposium of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE 2001), pages 1-8 pgs. 1-5 July 2001. Melbourne, Australia.
Abstract: Formal methods can be used to verify refinements made in the design stages of systems. For example, the state space of a detailed design model can be compared with that of an abstract design model to see if it preserves sequences of events. Problems with state space analysis (state explosion, fixed initial states) make this difficult for real applications. In this paper we outline an approach for obtaining a generalised state space of a distributed missile simulator. The original state space has a repetitive structure. Our aim is to prove that for any initial state, the system will eventually halt, after which we can define a compact graphical representation of the state space, that is independent of the initial state.