Stepwise CTL Model Checking of State/Event Systems

In this paper we present an efficient technique for symbolic model checking of any CTL formula with respect to a state/event system. Such a system is a concurrent version of a Mealy machine and is used to describe embedded reactive systems. The technique uses compositionality to find increasingly better upper and lower bounds of the solution to a CTL formula until an exact answer is found. Experiments show this approach to succeed on examples larger than the standard backwards traversal can handle, and even in many cases where both methods succeed it is shown to be faster.

[1]  Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli,et al.  An Iterative Approach to Language Containment , 1993, CAV.

[2]  A. Tarski.  A LATTICE-THEORETICAL FIXPOINT THEOREM AND ITS APPLICATIONS , 1955 .

[3]  Abelardo Pardo,et al.  Automatic Abstraction Techniques for Propositional µ-calculus Model Checking , 1997, CAV.

[4]  Kim G. Larsen,et al.  Verification of Large State/Event Systems Using Compositionality and Dependency Analysis , 1998, Formal Methods Syst. Des..

[5]  Edmund M. Clarke,et al.  Sequential circuit verification using symbolic model checking , 1991, DAC '90.

[6]  Edmund M. Clarke,et al.  Model checking, abstraction, and compositional verification , 1993 .

[7]  Kim G. Larsen,et al.  Verification of Large State/Event Systems Using Compositionality and Dependency Analysis , 1998, TACAS.

[8]  Randal E. Bryant,et al.  Graph-Based Algorithms for Boolean Function Manipulation , 1986, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[9]  Randal E. Bryant,et al.  Symbolic Boolean manipulation with ordered binary-decision diagrams , 1992, CSUR.

[10]  Edmund M. Clarke,et al.  Symbolic Model Checking with Partitioned Transistion Relations , 1991, VLSI.

[11]  Edmund M. Clarke,et al.  Symbolic model checking for sequential circuit verification , 1993, IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst..

[12]  Jørn Lind-Nielsen,et al.  BuDDy : A binary decision diagram package. , 1999 .

[13]  G. Hachtel,et al.  Tearing based automatic abstraction for CTL model checking , 1996, ICCAD 1996.

[14]  David Notkin,et al.  Improving efficiency of symbolic model checking for state-based system requirements , 1998, ISSTA '98.