The Hanoi Omega-Automata Format

We propose a flexible exchange format for ω-automata, as typically used in formal verification, and implement support for it in a range of established tools. Our aim is to simplify the interaction of tools, helping the research community to build upon other people’s work. A key feature of the format is the use of very generic acceptance conditions, specified by Boolean combinations of acceptance primitives, rather than being limited to common cases such as Büchi, Streett, or Rabin. Such flexibility in the choice of acceptance conditions can be exploited in applications, for example in probabilistic model checking, and furthermore encourages the development of acceptance-agnostic tools for automata manipulations. The format allows acceptance conditions that are either state-based or transition-based, and also supports alternating automata

Alternative Automata-based Approaches to Probabilistic Model Checking

In this thesis we focus on new methods for probabilistic model checking (PMC) with linear temporal logic (LTL). The standard approach translates an LTL formula into a deterministic ω-automaton with a double-exponential blow up. There are approaches for Markov chain analysis against LTL with exponential runtime, which motivates the search for non-deterministic automata with restricted forms of non-determinism that make them suitable for PMC. For MDPs, the approach via deterministic automata matches the double-exponential lower bound, but a practical application might benefit from approaches via non-deterministic automata. We first investigate good-for-games (GFG) automata. In GFG automata one can resolve the non-determinism for a finite prefix without knowing the infinite suffix and still obtain an accepting run for an accepted word. We explain that GFG automata are well-suited for MDP analysis on a theoretic level, but our experiments show that GFG automata cannot compete with deterministic automata. We have also researched another form of pseudo-determinism, namely unambiguity, where for every accepted word there is exactly one accepting run. We present a polynomial-time approach for PMC of Markov chains against specifications given by an unambiguous Büchi automaton (UBA). Its two key elements are the identification whether the induced probability is positive, and if so, the identification of a state set inducing probability 1. Additionally, we examine the new symbolic Muller acceptance described in the Hanoi Omega Automata Format, which we call Emerson-Lei acceptance. It is a positive Boolean formula over unconditional fairness constraints. We present a construction of small deterministic automata using Emerson-Lei acceptance. Deciding, whether an MDP has a positive maximal probability to satisfy an Emerson-Lei acceptance, is NP-complete. This fact has triggered a DPLL-based algorithm for deciding positiveness

A Verified and Compositional Translation of LTL to Deterministic Rabin Automata

We present a formalisation of the unified translation approach from linear temporal logic (LTL) to omega-automata from [Javier Esparza et al., 2018]. This approach decomposes LTL formulas into "simple" languages and allows a clear separation of concerns: first, we formalise the purely logical result yielding this decomposition; second, we develop a generic, executable, and expressive automata library providing necessary operations on automata to re-combine the "simple" languages; third, we instantiate this generic theory to obtain a construction for deterministic Rabin automata (DRA). We extract from this particular instantiation an executable tool translating LTL to DRAs. To the best of our knowledge this is the first verified translation of LTL to DRAs that is proven to be double-exponential in the worst case which asymptotically matches the known lower bound

Benchmarks for Parity Games (extended version)

We propose a benchmark suite for parity games that includes all benchmarks that have been used in the literature, and make it available online. We give an overview of the parity games, including a description of how they have been generated. We also describe structural properties of parity games, and using these properties we show that our benchmarks are representative. With this work we provide a starting point for further experimentation with parity games.Comment: The corresponding tool and benchmarks are available from https://github.com/jkeiren/paritygame-generator. This is an extended version of the paper that has been accepted for FSEN 201