Labeled transition systems are typically used as behavioral models of concurrent processes. Their labeled transitions define a one-step state-to-state reachability relation. This model can be generalized by modifying the transition relation to associate a state reachability distribution with any pair consisting of a source state and a transition label. The state reachability distribution is a function mapping each possible target state to a value that expresses the degree of one-step reachability of that state. Values are taken from a preordered set equipped with a minimum that denotes unreachability. By selecting suitable preordered sets, the resulting model, called ULTraS from Uniform Labeled Transition System, can be specialized to capture well-known models of fully nondeterministic processes (LTS), fully probabilistic processes (ADTMC), fully stochastic processes (ACTMC), and nondeterministic and probabilistic (MDP) or nondeterministic and stochastic (CTMDP) processes. This uniform treatment of different behavioral models extends to behavioral equivalences. They can be defined on ULTraS by relying on appropriate measure functions that express the degree of reachability of a set of states when performing multi-step computations. It is shown that the specializations of bisimulation, trace, and testing equivalences for the different classes of ULTraS coincide with the behavioral equivalences defined in the literature over traditional models except when nondeterminism and probability/stochasticity coexist; then new equivalences pop up.

Abstract. In contrast to the usual understanding of probabilistic systems as stochastic processes, recently these systems have also been regarded as transformers of probabilities. In this paper, we give a natural definition of strong bisimulation for probabilistic systems corresponding to this view that treats probability distributions as first-class citizens. Our definition applies in the same way to discrete systems as well as to systems with uncountable state and action spaces. Several examples demonstrate that our definition re-fines the understanding of behavioural equivalences of probabilistic systems. In particular, it solves a longstanding open problem concerning the repre-sentation of memoryless continuous time by memoryfull continuous time. Finally, we give algorithms for computing this bisimulation not only for fi-nite but also for classes of uncountably infinite systems. 1