Comparison of Algorithms for Checking Emptiness on Büchi Automata

We re-investigate the problem of LTL model-checking for finite-state systems. Typical solutions, like in Spin, work on the fly, reducing the problem to Buchi emptiness. This can be done in linear time, and a variety of algorithms with this property exist. Nonetheless, subtle design decisions can make a great difference to their actual performance in practice, especially when used on-the-fly. We compare a number of algorithms experimentally on a large benchmark suite, measure their actual run-time performance, and propose improvements. Compared with the algorithm implemented in Spin, our best algorithm is faster by about 33 % on average. We therefore recommend that, for on-the-fly explicit-state model checking, nested DFS should be replaced by better solutions.

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