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Remove Irrelevant Atomic Formulas for Timed Automaton Model Checking

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Abstract

Most of the timed automata reachability analysis algorithms in the literature explore the state spaces by enumeration of symbolic states, which use time constraints to represent a set of concrete states. A time constraint is a conjunction of atomic formulas which bound the differences of clock values. In this paper, it is shown that some atomic formulas of symbolic states generated by the algorithms can be removed to improve the model checking time- and space-efficiency. Such atomic formulas are called as irrelevant atomic formulas. A method is also presented to detect irrelevant formulas based on the test-reset information about clock variables. An optimized model-checking algorithm is designed based on these techniques. The case studies show that the techniques presented in this paper significantly improve the space- and time-efficiency of reachability analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, P.R. China

    Jian-Hua Zhao, Xuan-Dong Li & Guo-Liang Zheng

  2. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, P.R. China

    Jian-Hua Zhao, Xuan-Dong Li, Tao Zheng & Guo-Liang Zheng

Authors
  1. Jian-Hua Zhao
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  2. Xuan-Dong Li
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  3. Tao Zheng
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  4. Guo-Liang Zheng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jian-Hua Zhao.

Additional information

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 60203009, 60233020 and 60425204), the NSF of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK2003408) and the National Basic Research 973 Program of China (Grant No. 2002CB312001).

Jian-Hua Zhao is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University. He was awarded his Ph.D. degree from Nanjing University in 1999. His research interests include software engineering, formal method, especially model checking technique for real-time systems.

Xuan-Dong Li is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Nanjing University in 1994. His research interests include formal methods and object-oriented technology.

Tao Zheng is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University. He was awarded his M.S. degree from Nanjing University in 1992. His research interests include software engineering, formal method, especially model checking technique for real-time systems.

Guo-Liang Zheng is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from Nanjing University in 1961. His research area is software engineering.

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Zhao, JH., Li, XD., Zheng, T. et al. Remove Irrelevant Atomic Formulas for Timed Automaton Model Checking. J Comput Sci Technol 21, 41–51 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0041-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0041-9

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