A Compact Linear Translation for Bounded Model Checking

  • Authors:
  • Paul B. Jackson;Daniel Sheridan

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, United Kingdom;Adelard LLP, 10 Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS)
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

We present a syntactic scheme for translating future-time LTL bounded model checking problems into propositional satisfiability problems. The scheme is similar in principle to the Separated Normal Form encoding proposed in [Frisch, A., D. Sheridan and T. Walsh, A fixpoint based encoding for bounded model checking, in: M.D. Aagaard and J.W. O'Leary, editors, Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design; 4th International Conference, FMCAD 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2517 (2002), pp. 238-254] and extended to past time in [Cimatti, A., M. Roveri and D. Sheridan, Bounded verification of past LTL, in: A.J. Hu and A.K. Martin, editors, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer Aided Design (FMCAD 2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2004)]: an initial phase involves putting LTL formulae into a normal form based on linear-time fixpoint characterisations of temporal operators. As with [Cimatti, A., M. Roveri and D. Sheridan, Bounded verification of past LTL, in: A.J. Hu and A.K. Martin, editors, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer Aided Design (FMCAD 2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2004)] and [Latvala, T., A. Biere, K. Heljanko and T. Junttila, Simple bounded LTL model checking, in: Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design; 5th International Conference, FMCAD 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3312 (2004), pp. 186-200], the size of propositional formulae produced is linear in the model checking bound, but the constant of proportionality appears to be lower. A denotational approach is taken in the presentation which is significantly more rigorous than that in [Frisch, A., D. Sheridan and T. Walsh, A fixpoint based encoding for bounded model checking, in: M.D. Aagaard and J.W. O'Leary, editors, Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design; 4th International Conference, FMCAD 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2517 (2002), pp. 238-254] and [Cimatti, A., M. Roveri and D. Sheridan, Bounded verification of past LTL, in: A.J. Hu and A.K. Martin, editors, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer Aided Design (FMCAD 2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2004)], and which provides an elegant alternative way of viewing fixpoint based translations in [Latvala, T., A. Biere, K. Heljanko and T. Junttila, Simple bounded LTL model checking, in: Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design; 5th International Conference, FMCAD 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3312 (2004), pp. 186-200] and [Biere, A., A. Cimatti, E. M. Clarke, O. Strichman and Y. Zhu, Bounded model checking, Advances in Computers 58 (2003)].