We present a general framework for the formal specification and algorithmic analysis of hybrid systems. A hybrid system consists of a discrete program with an analog environment. We model hybrid systems as nite automata equipped with variables that evolve continuously with time according to dynamical laws. For verification purposes, we restrict ourselves to linear hybrid systems, where all variables follow piecewise-linear trajectories. We provide decidability and undecidability results for classes of linear hybrid systems, and we show that standard program-analysis techniques can be adapted to linear hybrid systems. In particular, we consider symbolic model-checking and minimization procedures that are based on the reachability analysis of an infinite state space. The procedures iteratively compute state sets that are definable as unions of convex polyhedra in multidimensional real space. We also present approximation techniques for dealing with systems for which the iterative procedures do not converge.

Translating linear temporal logic formulas to automata has proven to be an effective approach for implementing linear-time model-checking, and for obtaining many extensions and improvements to this verification method. On the other hand, for branching temporal logic, automata-theoretic techniques have long been thought to introduce an exponential penalty, making them essentially useless for model-checking. Recently, Bernholtz and Grumberg have shown that this exponential penalty can be avoided, though they did not match the linear complexity of non-automata-theoretic algorithms. In this paper we show that alternating tree automata are the key to a comprehensive automata-theoretic framework for branching temporal logics. Not only, as was shown by Muller et al., can they be used to obtain optimal decision procedures, but, as we show here, they also make it possible to derive optimal model-checking algorithms. Moreover, the simple combinatorial structure that emerges from the a...

We demonstrate the feasibility of using the XSB tabled logic programming system as a programmable fixed-point engine for implementing efficient local model checkers. In particular, we present XMC, an XSBbased local model checker for a CCS-like value-passing language and the alternation-free fragment of the modal mu-calculus. XMC is written in under 200 lines of XSB code, which constitute a declarative specification of CCS and the modal mu-calculus at the level of semantic equations. In order to gauge the performance of XMC as an algorithmic model checker, we conducted a series of benchmarking experiments designed to compare the performance of XMC with the local model checkers implemented in C/C++ in the Concurrency Factory and SPIN specification and verification environments. After applying certain newly developed logic-programmingbased optimizations (along with some standard ones), XMC's performance became extremely competitive with that of the Factory and shows promise in its comparison with SPIN.

We argue that rather than representing an agent's knowledge as a collection of formulas, and then doing theorem proving to see if a given formula follows from an agent's knowledge base, it may be more useful to represent this knowledge by a semantic model, and then do model checking to see if the given formula is true in that model. We discuss how to construct a model that represents an agent's knowledge in a number of different contexts, and then consider how to approach the model-checking problem.

This paper addresses the design of reactive real-time embedded systems. Such systems are often heterogeneous in implementation technologies and design styles, for example by combining hardware ASICs with embedded software. The concurrent design process for such embedded systems involves solving the specification, validation, and synthesis problems. We review the variety of approaches to these problems that have been taken.

This paper describes a new symbolic model checker, called NUSMV, developed as part of a joint project between CMU and IRST. NUSMV is the result of the reengineering, reimplementation, and, to a limited extent, extension of the CMU SMV model checker. The core of this paper consists of a detailed description of the NUSMV functionalities, architecture, and implementation.

. When proving invariance properties of programs one is faced with two problems. The first problem is related to the necessity of proving tautologies of the considered assertion language, whereas the second manifests in the need of finding sufficiently strong invariants. This paper focuses on the second problem and describes techniques for the automatic generation of invariants. The first set of these techniques is applicable on sequential transition systems and allows to derive so-called local invariants, i.e. predicates which are invariant at some control location. The second is applicable on networks of transition systems and allows to combine local invariants of the sequential components to obtain local invariants of the global systems. Furthermore, a refined strengthening technique is presented that allows to avoid the problem of size-increase of the considered predicates which is the main drawback of the usual strengthening technique. The proposed techniques are illustrated by ex...

Abstract. The paper shows that, by an appropriate choice of a rich assertional language, it is possible to extend the utility of symbolic model checking beyond the realm of bdd-represented nite-state systems into the domain of in nite-state systems, leading to a powerful technique for uniform veri cation of unbounded (parameterized) process networks. The main contributions of the paper are a formulation of a general framework for symbolic model checking of in nite-state systems, a demonstration that many individual examples of uniformly veri ed parameterized designs that appear in the literature are special cases of our general approach, verifying the correctness of the Futurebus+ design for all single-bus con gurations, extending the technique to tree architectures, and establishing that the presented method is a precise dual to the top-down invariant generation method used in deductive veri cation. 1

Of special interest in formal verification are safety properties, which assert that the system always stays within some allowed region. Proof rules for the verification of safety properties have been developed in the proof-based approach to verification, making verification of safety properties simpler than verification of general properties. In this paper we consider model checking of safety properties. A computation that violates a general linear property reaches a bad cycle, which witnesses the violation of the property. Accordingly, current methods and tools for model checking of linear properties are based on a search for bad cycles. A symbolic implementation of such a search involves the calculation of a nested fixed-point expression over the system's state space, and is often impossible. Every computation that violates a safety property has a finite prefix along which the property is violated. We use this fact in order to base model checking of safety properties on a search for ...

We propose a method for the implementation and analysis of real-time systems, based on the compilation of specifications into extended automata. Such a method has been already adopted for the so called "synchronous" real-time programming languages.