Truly On-The-Fly LTL Model Checking

We propose a novel algorithm for automata-based LTL model checking that interleaves the construction of the generalized B\"{u}chi automaton for the negation of the formula and the emptiness check. Our algorithm first converts the LTL formula into a linear weak alternating automaton; configurations of the alternating automaton correspond to the locations of a generalized B\"{u}chi automaton, and a variant of Tarjan's algorithm is used to decide the existence of an accepting run of the product of the transition system and the automaton. Because we avoid an explicit construction of the B\"{u}chi automaton, our approach can yield significant improvements in runtime and memory, for large LTL formulas. The algorithm has been implemented within the SPIN model checker, and we present experimental results for some benchmark examples

Exploiting the Temporal Logic Hierarchy and the Non-Confluence Property for Efficient LTL Synthesis

The classic approaches to synthesize a reactive system from a linear temporal logic (LTL) specification first translate the given LTL formula to an equivalent omega-automaton and then compute a winning strategy for the corresponding omega-regular game. To this end, the obtained omega-automata have to be (pseudo)-determinized where typically a variant of Safra's determinization procedure is used. In this paper, we show that this determinization step can be significantly improved for tool implementations by replacing Safra's determinization by simpler determinization procedures. In particular, we exploit (1) the temporal logic hierarchy that corresponds to the well-known automata hierarchy consisting of safety, liveness, Buechi, and co-Buechi automata as well as their boolean closures, (2) the non-confluence property of omega-automata that result from certain translations of LTL formulas, and (3) symbolic implementations of determinization procedures for the Rabin-Scott and the Miyano-Hayashi breakpoint construction. In particular, we present convincing experimental results that demonstrate the practical applicability of our new synthesis procedure

Pseudorandom number generation with self programmable cellular automata

In this paper, we propose a new class of cellular automata – self programming cellular automata (SPCA) with specific application to pseudorandom number generation. By changing a cell's state transition rules in relation to factors such as its neighboring cell's states, behavioral complexity can be increased and utilized. Interplay between the state transition neighborhood and rule selection neighborhood leads to a new composite neighborhood and state transition rule that is the linear combination of two different mappings with different temporal dependencies. It is proved that when the transitional matrices for both the state transition and rule selection neighborhood are non-singular, SPCA will not exhibit non-group behavior. Good performance can be obtained using simple neighborhoods with certain CA length, transition rules etc. Certain configurations of SPCA pass all DIEHARD and ENT tests with an implementation cost lower than current reported work. Output sampling methods are also suggested to improve output efficiency by sampling the outputs of the new rule selection neighborhoods

State of B\"uchi Complementation

Complementation of B\"uchi automata has been studied for over five decades since the formalism was introduced in 1960. Known complementation constructions can be classified into Ramsey-based, determinization-based, rank-based, and slice-based approaches. Regarding the performance of these approaches, there have been several complexity analyses but very few experimental results. What especially lacks is a comparative experiment on all of the four approaches to see how they perform in practice. In this paper, we review the four approaches, propose several optimization heuristics, and perform comparative experimentation on four representative constructions that are considered the most efficient in each approach. The experimental results show that (1) the determinization-based Safra-Piterman construction outperforms the other three in producing smaller complements and finishing more tasks in the allocated time and (2) the proposed heuristics substantially improve the Safra-Piterman and the slice-based constructions.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures, a preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA

Linear Encodings of Bounded LTL Model Checking

We consider the problem of bounded model checking (BMC) for linear temporal logic (LTL). We present several efficient encodings that have size linear in the bound. Furthermore, we show how the encodings can be extended to LTL with past operators (PLTL). The generalised encoding is still of linear size, but cannot detect minimal length counterexamples. By using the virtual unrolling technique minimal length counterexamples can be captured, however, the size of the encoding is quadratic in the specification. We also extend virtual unrolling to Buchi automata, enabling them to accept minimal length counterexamples. Our BMC encodings can be made incremental in order to benefit from incremental SAT technology. With fairly small modifications the incremental encoding can be further enhanced with a termination check, allowing us to prove properties with BMC. Experiments clearly show that our new encodings improve performance of BMC considerably, particularly in the case of the incremental encoding, and that they are very competitive for finding bugs. An analysis of the liveness-to-safety transformation reveals many similarities to the BMC encodings in this paper. Using the liveness-to-safety translation with BDD-based invariant checking results in an efficient method to find shortest counterexamples that complements the BMC-based approach.Comment: Final version for Logical Methods in Computer Science CAV 2005 special issu

SAT-based Explicit LTL Reasoning

We present here a new explicit reasoning framework for linear temporal logic (LTL), which is built on top of propositional satisfiability (SAT) solving. As a proof-of-concept of this framework, we describe a new LTL satisfiability tool, Aalta\_v2.0, which is built on top of the MiniSAT SAT solver. We test the effectiveness of this approach by demonnstrating that Aalta\_v2.0 significantly outperforms all existing LTL satisfiability solvers. Furthermore, we show that the framework can be extended from propositional LTL to assertional LTL (where we allow theory atoms), by replacing MiniSAT with the Z3 SMT solver, and demonstrating that this can yield an exponential improvement in performance