Quasi-Birth-Death Processes, Tree-Like QBDs, Probabilistic 1-Counter Automata, and Pushdown Systems

We begin by observing that (discrete-time) Quasi-Birth-Death Processes (QBDs) are equivalent, in a precise sense, to probabilistic 1-Counter Automata (p1CAs), and both Tree-Like QBDs (TL-QBDs) and Tree-Structured QBDs (TS-QBDs) are equivalent to both probabilistic Pushdown Systems (pPDSs) and Recursive Markov Chains (RMCs). We then proceed to exploit these connections to obtain a number of new algorithmic upper and lower bounds for central computational problems about these models. Our main result is this: for an arbitrary QBD, we can approximate its termination probabilities (i.e., its $G$ matrix) to within $i$ bits of precision (i.e., within additive error $1/2^i$), in time polynomial in \underline{both} the encoding size of the QBD and in $i$, in the unit-cost rational arithmetic RAM model of computation. Specifically, we show that a decomposed Newton's method can be used to achieve this. We emphasize that this bound is very different from the well-known ``linear/quadratic convergence'' of numerical analysis, known for QBDs and TL-QBDs, which typically gives no constructive bound in terms of the encoding size of the system being solved. In fact, we observe (based on recent results) that for the more general TL-QBDs such a polynomial upper bound on Newton's method fails badly. Our upper bound proof for QBDs combines several ingredients: a detailed analysis of the structure of 1-counter automata, an iterative application of a classic condition number bound for errors in linear systems, and a very recent constructive bound on the performance of Newton's method for strongly connected monotone systems of polynomial equations. We show that the quantitative termination decision problem for QBDs (namely, ``is $G_{u,v} \geq 1/2$?'') is at least as hard as long standing open problems in the complexity of exact numerical computation, specifically the square-root sum problem. On the other hand, it follows from our earlier results for RMCs that any non-trivial approximation of termination probabilities for TL-QBDs is sqrt-root-sum-hard

Advanced Ramsey-Based Büchi Automata Inclusion Testing

International audienceChecking language inclusion between two nondeterministic B ̈ chi au- u tomata A and B is computationally hard (PSPACE-complete). However, several approaches which are efficient in many practical cases have been proposed. We build on one of these, which is known as the Ramsey-based approach. It has recently been shown that the basic Ramsey-based approach can be drastically optimized by using powerful subsumption techniques, which allow one to prune the search-space when looking for counterexamples to inclusion. While previous works only used subsumption based on set inclusion or forward simulation on A and B , we propose the following new techniques: (1) A larger subsumption rela- tion based on a combination of backward and forward simulations on A and B . (2) A method to additionally use forward simulation between A and B . (3) Ab- straction techniques that can speed up the computation and lead to early detection of counterexamples. The new algorithm was implemented and tested on automata derived from real-world model checking benchmarks, and on the Tabakov-Vardi random model, thus showing the usefulness of the proposed techniques

An Until Hierarchy for Temporal Logic

We prove there is a strict hierarchy of expressive power according to the Until depth of linear temporal logic (TL) formulas: for each k, there is a very natural property that is not expressible with k nestings of Until operators, regardless of the number of applications of other operators, but is expressible by a formula with Until depth k + 1. Our proof uses a new Ehrenfeucht-Frasse (EF) game designed specifically for TL. These properties can all be expressed in first-order logic with quantifier depth and size O(log k), and we use them to observe some interesting relationships between TL and first-order expressibility. We then use the EF game in a novel way to effectively characterize (1) the TL properties expressible without Until, as well as (2) those expressible without both Until and Next. By playing the game "on finite automata", we prove that the automata recognizing languages expressible in each of the two fragments have distinctive structural properties. The characterization..