An integrated framework for the dependability evaluation of distributed mobile applications

Current distributed mobile systems are usually characterized by a huge number of nodes, different network domains, different applications running, variability of the users' behavior, and dynamicity and heterogeneity of the communication networks. A typical example can be found in the automotive context, considering car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication scenarios. In this paper we propose a model-based approach for the dependability evaluation of distributed applications in a mobile environment. The final Multiple Phased System model representing the analyzed mobile scenario is automatically derived from highlevel UML specifications through a sequence of model transformation steps. The evaluation work ow is based on i) a hierarchical modelling approach that analyzes the system at different levels, namely communication, architecture, application and user level; ii) a time-based system decomposition identifying different phases for different user activities and environment conditions.