A partial approach to model checking

A model-checking method for linear-time temporal logic that avoids the state explosion due to the modeling of concurrency by interleaving is presented. The method relies on the concept of the Mazurkiewicz trace as a semantic basis and uses automata-theoretic techniques, including automata that operate on words of ordinality higher than omega . In particular, automata operating on words of length omega *n, n in omega are defined. These automata are studied, and an efficient algorithm to check whether such automata are nonempty is given. It is shown that when it is viewed as an omega *n automaton, the trace automaton can be substituted for the production automaton in linear-time model checking. The efficiency of the method of P. Godefroid (Proc. Workshop on Computer Aided Verification, 1990) is thus fully available for model checking.<
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