Efficient Translation from Transition-Based Generalized Büchi Automata to Büchi Automata

Abstract

The automata-theoretic approach is one of the state-of-the-art model-checking methods, which consists of the following steps: use a Buchi automaton to represent the abstract system model; use an LTL formula to express the properties to be verified; translate the negation of the LTL formula to a Buchi automaton and check whether the intersection of sentences accepted by the two automata is non-empty. One type of methods for translating LTL formulas to Buchi automata has one step for calculating transition-based generalized Buchi automata (TGBA) and another step for translating TGBA to Buchi automata. This paper redefines the product operation of TGBA according to the characteristics of the accepting language of Buchi automata. This leads to the reduction of the number of states that need to be copied and therefore smaller Buchi automata. The experimental results given at the end of this paper demonstrate the advantage of the approach based on test cases with randomly generated formulas.