Uniform Strategies

We consider turn-based game arenas for which we investigate uniformity properties of strategies. These properties involve bundles of plays, that arise from some semantical motive. Typically, we can represent constraints on allowed strategies, such as being observation-based. We propose a formal language to specify uniformity properties and demonstrate its relevance by rephrasing various known problems from the literature. Note that the ability to correlate different plays cannot be achieved by any branching-time logic if not equipped with an additional modality, so-called R in this contribution. We also study an automated procedure to synthesize strategies subject to a uniformity property, which strictly extends existing results based on, say standard temporal logics. We exhibit a generic solution for the synthesis problem provided the bundles of plays rely on any binary relation definable by a finite state transducer. This solution yields a non-elementary procedure.Comment: (2012

An Automata-Theoretic Approach to the Verification of Distributed Algorithms

We introduce an automata-theoretic method for the verification of distributed algorithms running on ring networks. In a distributed algorithm, an arbitrary number of processes cooperate to achieve a common goal (e.g., elect a leader). Processes have unique identifiers (pids) from an infinite, totally ordered domain. An algorithm proceeds in synchronous rounds, each round allowing a process to perform a bounded sequence of actions such as send or receive a pid, store it in some register, and compare register contents wrt. the associated total order. An algorithm is supposed to be correct independently of the number of processes. To specify correctness properties, we introduce a logic that can reason about processes and pids. Referring to leader election, it may say that, at the end of an execution, each process stores the maximum pid in some dedicated register. Since the verification of distributed algorithms is undecidable, we propose an underapproximation technique, which bounds the number of rounds. This is an appealing approach, as the number of rounds needed by a distributed algorithm to conclude is often exponentially smaller than the number of processes. We provide an automata-theoretic solution, reducing model checking to emptiness for alternating two-way automata on words. Overall, we show that round-bounded verification of distributed algorithms over rings is PSPACE-complete.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Monadic Decomposability of Regular Relations

Monadic decomposibility - the ability to determine whether a formula in a given logical theory can be decomposed into a boolean combination of monadic formulas - is a powerful tool for devising a decision procedure for a given logical theory. In this paper, we revisit a classical decision problem in automata theory: given a regular (a.k.a. synchronized rational) relation, determine whether it is recognizable, i.e., it has a monadic decomposition (that is, a representation as a boolean combination of cartesian products of regular languages). Regular relations are expressive formalisms which, using an appropriate string encoding, can capture relations definable in Presburger Arithmetic. In fact, their expressive power coincide with relations definable in a universal automatic structure; equivalently, those definable by finite set interpretations in WS1S (Weak Second Order Theory of One Successor). Determining whether a regular relation admits a recognizable relation was known to be decidable (and in exponential time for binary relations), but its precise complexity still hitherto remains open. Our main contribution is to fully settle the complexity of this decision problem by developing new techniques employing infinite Ramsey theory. The complexity for DFA (resp. NFA) representations of regular relations is shown to be NLOGSPACE-complete (resp. PSPACE-complete)

Parameterized Synthesis

We study the synthesis problem for distributed architectures with a parametric number of finite-state components. Parameterized specifications arise naturally in a synthesis setting, but thus far it was unclear how to detect realizability and how to perform synthesis in a parameterized setting. Using a classical result from verification, we show that for a class of specifications in indexed LTL\X, parameterized synthesis in token ring networks is equivalent to distributed synthesis in a network consisting of a few copies of a single process. Adapting a well-known result from distributed synthesis, we show that the latter problem is undecidable. We describe a semi-decision procedure for the parameterized synthesis problem in token rings, based on bounded synthesis. We extend the approach to parameterized synthesis in token-passing networks with arbitrary topologies, and show applicability on a simple case study. Finally, we sketch a general framework for parameterized synthesis based on cutoffs and other parameterized verification techniques.Comment: Extended version of TACAS 2012 paper, 29 page

Combining centralised and distributed testing

Many systems interact with their environment at distributed interfaces (ports) and sometimes it is not possible to place synchronised local testers at the ports of the system under test (SUT). There are then two main approaches to testing: having independent local testers or a single centralised tester that interacts asynchronously with the SUT. The power of using independent testers has been captured using implementation relation \dioco. In this paper we define implementation relation \diococ for the centralised approach and prove that \dioco and \diococ are incomparable. This shows that the frameworks detect different types of faults and so we devise a hybrid framework and define an implementation relation \diocos for this. We prove that the hybrid framework is more powerful than the distributed and centralised approaches. We then prove that the Oracle problem is NP-complete for \diococ and \diocos but can be solved in polynomial time if we place an upper bound on the number of ports. Finally, we consider the problem of deciding whether there is a test case that is guaranteed to force a finite state model into a particular state or to distinguish two states, proving that both problems are undecidable for the centralised and hybrid frameworks

Quantified CTL: Expressiveness and Complexity

While it was defined long ago, the extension of CTL with quantification over atomic propositions has never been studied extensively. Considering two different semantics (depending whether propositional quantification refers to the Kripke structure or to its unwinding tree), we study its expressiveness (showing in particular that QCTL coincides with Monadic Second-Order Logic for both semantics) and characterise the complexity of its model-checking and satisfiability problems, depending on the number of nested propositional quantifiers (showing that the structure semantics populates the polynomial hierarchy while the tree semantics populates the exponential hierarchy)

Representing Polynomial Splines over Infinite Hierarchical Meshes by Finite Automata

We propose a data structure based on finite automata for representing polynomial splines over infinite hierarchical meshes. It allows to store and operate such splines using only finite amount of memory. This naturally extends a classical framework of hierarchical tensor product B-splines for infinite meshes in a way suitable for computing