Alternating refinement relations

Rajeev Alur, Thomas A. Henzinger, Orna Kupferman, Moshe Y. Vardi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

239 Scopus citations

Abstract

Alternating transition systems are a general model for composite systems which allow the study of collaborative as well as adversarial relationships between individual system components. Unlike in labeled transition systems, where each transition corresponds to a possible step of the system (which may involve some or all components), in alternating transition systems, each transition corresponds to a possible move in a game between the components. In this paper, we study refinement relations between alternating transition systems, such as "Does the implementation refine the set A of specification components without constraining the components not in A?" In particular, we generalize the definitions of the simulation and trace containment preorders from labeled transition systems to alternating transition systems. The generalizations are called alternating simulation and alternating trace containment. Unlike existing refinement relations, they allow the refinement of individual components within the context of a composite system description. We show that, like ordinary simulation, alternating simulation can be checked in polynomial time using a fixpoint computation algorithm. While ordinary trace containment is PSPACE-complete, we establish alternating trace containment to be EXPTIME-complete. Finally, we present logical characterizations for the two preorders in terms of ATL, a temporal logic capable of referring to games between system components.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCONCUR 1998 Concurrency Theory - 9th International Conference, Proceedings
EditorsDavide Sangiorgi, Robert de Simone
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages164-178
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)9783540648963
DOIs
StatePublished - 1998
Externally publishedYes
Event9th International Conference on Concurrency Theory, CONCUR 1998 - Nice, France
Duration: 8 Sep 199811 Sep 1998

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume1466
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference9th International Conference on Concurrency Theory, CONCUR 1998
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityNice
Period8/09/9811/09/98

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 1998, Springer Verlag. All rights reserved.

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