Cooperative communications, in which a relay node helps the source node to deliver its packets to the destination node, are able to obtain significant benefits in terms of transmission reliability, coverage extension and energy efficiency. A Cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest (C-ARQ) MAC protocol has been recently proposed to exploit cooperative diversity at the MAC layer. In this paper, we validate the integrity and the validity of the C-ARQ protocol using formal methods. The protocol logic is modeled in SDL and implemented in PROMELA. The functionality of the C-ARQ protocol is verified through simulations and verifications using SPIN.
['Xin He', 'Ram Kumar', 'Liping Mu', 'Terje Gjøsæter', 'Frank Y. Li']
Formal verification of a Cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest MAC protocol