Measuring With Timed Patterns

We propose a declarative measurement specification language for quantitative performance evaluation of hybrid (discrete-continuous) systems based on simulation traces. We use timed regular expressions with events to specify patterns that define segments of simulation traces over which measurements are to be taken. In addition, we associate measure specifications over these patterns to describe a particular type of performance evaluation (maximization, average, etc.) to be done over the matched signal segments. The resulting language enables expressive and versatile specification of measurement objectives. We develop an algorithm for our measurement framework, implement it in a prototype tool, and apply it in a case study of an automotive communication protocol. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed technique is usable with very low overhead to a typical (computationally intensive) simulation.