Reducing nondeterministic finite automata with SAT solvers

Authors:
Jaco Geldenhuys;Brink van der Merwe;Lynette van Zijl
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa;Department of Computer Science, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa;Department of Computer Science, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa
Venue:
FSMNLP'09 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Finite-state methods and natural language processing
Year:
2009

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Abstract

We consider the problem of reducing the number of states of nondeterministic finite automata, and show how to encode the reduction as a Boolean satisfiability problem. This approach improves on previous work by reducing a more general class of automata. Experimental results show that it produces a minimal automaton in almost all cases and that the running time compares favourably to the Kameda-Weiner algorithm.