503 research outputs found
A uniform framework for modelling nondeterministic, probabilistic, stochastic, or mixed processes and their behavioral equivalences
Labeled transition systems are typically used as behavioral models of concurrent processes, and the labeled transitions define the a one-step state-to-state reachability relation. This model can be made generalized by modifying the transition relation to associate a state reachability distribution, rather than a single target state, with any pair of source state and transition label. The state reachability distribution becomes a function mapping each possible target state to a value that expresses the degree of one-step reachability of that state. Values are taken from a preordered set equipped with a minimum that denotes unreachability. By selecting suitable preordered sets, the resulting model, called ULTraS from Uniform Labeled Transition System, can be specialized to capture well-known models of fully nondeterministic processes (LTS), fully
probabilistic processes (ADTMC), fully stochastic processes (ACTMC), and of nondeterministic and probabilistic (MDP) or nondeterministic and stochastic (CTMDP) processes. This uniform treatment of different behavioral models extends to behavioral equivalences. These can be defined on ULTraS by relying on appropriate measure functions that expresses the degree of reachability of a set of states when performing
single-step or multi-step computations. It is shown that the specializations of bisimulation, trace, and testing
equivalences for the different classes of ULTraS coincide with the behavioral equivalences defined in the literature over traditional models
Testing Reactive Probabilistic Processes
We define a testing equivalence in the spirit of De Nicola and Hennessy for
reactive probabilistic processes, i.e. for processes where the internal
nondeterminism is due to random behaviour. We characterize the testing
equivalence in terms of ready-traces. From the characterization it follows that
the equivalence is insensitive to the exact moment in time in which an internal
probabilistic choice occurs, which is inherent from the original testing
equivalence of De Nicola and Hennessy. We also show decidability of the testing
equivalence for finite systems for which the complete model may not be known
Refinement for Probabilistic Systems with Nondeterminism
Before we combine actions and probabilities two very obvious questions should
be asked. Firstly, what does "the probability of an action" mean? Secondly, how
does probability interact with nondeterminism? Neither question has a single
universally agreed upon answer but by considering these questions at the outset
we build a novel and hopefully intuitive probabilistic event-based formalism.
In previous work we have characterised refinement via the notion of testing.
Basically, if one system passes all the tests that another system passes (and
maybe more) we say the first system is a refinement of the second. This is, in
our view, an important way of characterising refinement, via the question "what
sort of refinement should I be using?"
We use testing in this paper as the basis for our refinement. We develop
tests for probabilistic systems by analogy with the tests developed for
non-probabilistic systems. We make sure that our probabilistic tests, when
performed on non-probabilistic automata, give us refinement relations which
agree with for those non-probabilistic automata. We formalise this property as
a vertical refinement.Comment: In Proceedings Refine 2011, arXiv:1106.348
Revisiting bisimilarity and its modal logic for nondeterministic and probabilistic processes
We consider PML, the probabilistic version of Hennessy-Milner logic introduced by Larsen and Skou to characterize bisimilarity over probabilistic processes without internal
nondeterminism.We provide two different interpretations for PML by considering nondeterministic and probabilistic processes as models, and we exhibit two new bisimulation-based equivalences that are in full agreement with those interpretations. Our new equivalences include
as coarsest congruences the two bisimilarities for nondeterministic and probabilistic processes proposed by Segala and Lynch. The latter equivalences are instead in agreement with two versions of Hennessy-Milner logic extended with an additional probabilistic operator
interpreted over state distributions rather than over individual states. Thus, our new interpretations of PML and the corresponding new bisimilarities offer a uniform framework for reasoning on processes that are purely nondeterministic or reactive probabilistic or are mixing nondeterminism and probability in an alternating/non-alternating way
The Spectrum of Strong Behavioral Equivalences for Nondeterministic and Probabilistic Processes
We present a spectrum of trace-based, testing, and bisimulation equivalences
for nondeterministic and probabilistic processes whose activities are all
observable. For every equivalence under study, we examine the discriminating
power of three variants stemming from three approaches that differ for the way
probabilities of events are compared when nondeterministic choices are resolved
via deterministic schedulers. We show that the first approach - which compares
two resolutions relatively to the probability distributions of all considered
events - results in a fragment of the spectrum compatible with the spectrum of
behavioral equivalences for fully probabilistic processes. In contrast, the
second approach - which compares the probabilities of the events of a
resolution with the probabilities of the same events in possibly different
resolutions - gives rise to another fragment composed of coarser equivalences
that exhibits several analogies with the spectrum of behavioral equivalences
for fully nondeterministic processes. Finally, the third approach - which only
compares the extremal probabilities of each event stemming from the different
resolutions - yields even coarser equivalences that, however, give rise to a
hierarchy similar to that stemming from the second approach.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2013, arXiv:1306.241
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