Behavioral Automata Composition for Automatic Topology Independent Verification of Parameterized Systems

By: Youssef Hanna, Samik Basu, and Hridesh Rajan

Abstract

Verifying correctness properties of parameterized systems is a long-standing problem. The challenge lies in the lack of guarantee that the property is satisfied for all instances of the parameterized system. Existing work on addressing this challenge aims to reduce this problem to checking the properties on smaller systems with a bound on the parameter referred to as the cut-off. A property satisfied on the system with the cut-off ensures that it is satisfied for systems with any larger parameter. The major problem with these techniques is that they only work for certain classes of systems with specific communication topology such as ring topology, thus leaving other interesting classes of systems unverified. We contribute an automated technique for finding the cut-off of the parameterized system that works for systems defined with any topology. Given the specification and the topology of the system, our technique is able to automatically generate the cut-off specific to this system. We prove the soundness of our technique and demonstrate its effectiveness and practicality by applying it to several canonical examples where in some cases, our technique obtains smaller cut-off values than those presented in the existing literature.

Other Info

See also the conference paper from ESEC/FSE ‘09.

ACM Reference

Hanna, Y. et al. 2009. Behavioral Automata Composition for Automatic Topology Independent Verification of Parameterized Systems. Technical Report #09-17. Iowa State University, Dept. of Computer Science.

BibTeX Reference

@techreport{hanna2009behavioral-a,
  author = {Hanna, Youssef and Basu, Samik and Rajan, Hridesh},
  title = {Behavioral Automata Composition for Automatic Topology Independent Verification of Parameterized Systems},
  year = {2009},
  institution = {Iowa State University, Dept. of Computer Science},
  number = {09-17},
  abstract = {
    Verifying correctness properties of parameterized systems is a long-standing
    problem. The challenge lies in the lack of guarantee that the property is
    satisfied for all instances of the parameterized system. Existing work on
    addressing this challenge aims to reduce this problem to checking the
    properties on smaller systems with a bound on the parameter referred to as the
    cut-off. A property satisfied on the system with the cut-off ensures that it
    is satisfied for systems with any larger parameter. The major problem with
    these techniques is that they only work for certain classes of systems with
    specific communication topology such as ring topology, thus leaving other
    interesting classes of systems unverified. We contribute an automated
    technique for finding the cut-off of the parameterized system that works for
    systems defined with any topology. Given the specification and the topology of
    the system, our technique is able to automatically generate the cut-off
    specific to this system. We prove the soundness of our technique and
    demonstrate its effectiveness and practicality by applying it to several
    canonical examples where in some cases, our technique obtains smaller cut-off
    values than those presented in the existing literature.
  }
}