Formal Specifications with Data-Driven Signal Analysis

Abstract

Developing analog and hybrid systems requires substantial domain knowledge that is hard to articulate in a formal specification; without additional effort, this domain knowledge is also inaccessible to machine learning methods. We propose a hybrid approach for analyzing and monitoring real-valued signals that integrates specification-based and data-driven techniques. We use regular expressions with interval operations to identify regions of interest in a signal, classical signal processing methods to extract semantically meaningful features, and semi-supervised machine learning to infer complex relationships that distinguish correct from faulty behaviors. The relationships learned from normal behavior data can automatically detect incorrect behavior in the same system or variants thereof. We evaluate the method on a voltage regulator, demonstrating its effectiveness in detecting undesired system behaviors.