Improved undecidability results on weighted timed automata

In this paper, we strengthen two recent undecidability results about weighted timed automata, an extension of timed automata with cost variables. More precisely, we propose new encodings of a Minsky machine that only require three clocks and one stopwatch cost, while previous reductions required five clocks and one stopwatch cost.     

Model Checking Weighted Integer Reset Timed Automata

Weighted timed automata (WTA), introduced in Alur et al. (Proceedings of HSCC’01, LNCS, vol. 2034, pp. 49–62, Springer, Berlin, 2001), Behrmann et al. (Proceedings of HSCC’01, LNCS, vol. 2034, pp. 147–161, Springer, Berlin, 2001) are an extension of Alur and Dill (Theor. Comput. Sci. 126(2):183–235, 1994) timed automata, a widely accepted formalism for the modelling and verification of real time systems. Weighted timed automata extend timed automata by allowing costs on the locations and edges. There has been a lot of interest Bouyer et al. (Inf. Process. Lett. 98(5):188–194, 2006), Bouyer et al. (Log. Methods Comput. Sci. 4(2):9, 2008), Brihaye et al. (Proceedings of FORMATS/FTRTFT’04, LNCS, vol. 3253, pp. 277–292, Springer, Berlin, 2004), Brihaye et al. (Inf. Comput. 204(3):408–433, 2006) in studying the model checking problem of weighted timed automata. The properties of interest are written using logic weighted CTL (WCTL), an extension of CTL with costs. It has been shown Bouyer et al. (Log. Methods Comput. Sci. 4(2):9, 2008) that the problem of model checking WTAs with a single clock using WCTL with no external cost variables is decidable, while 3 clocks render the problem undecidable Bouyer et al. (Inf. Process. Lett. 98(5):188–194, 2006). The question of 2 clocks is open. In this paper, we introduce a subclass of weighted timed automata called weighted integer reset timed automata (WIRTA) and study the model checking problem. We give a clock reduction technique for WIRTA. Given a WIRTA A\mathcal{A} with n≥1 clocks, we show that a single clock WIRTA A￠\mathcal{A}' preserving the paths and costs of A\mathcal{A} can be obtained. This gives us the decidability of model checking WIRTA with n≥1 clocks and m≥1 costs using WCTL with no external cost variables. We then show that for a restricted version of WCTL with external cost variables, the model checking problem is undecidable for WIRTA with 3 stopwatch costs and 1 clock. Finally, we show that model checking WTA with 2 clocks and 1 stopwatch cost against WCTL with no external cost variables is undecidable, thereby answering a question that has remained long open.     

Robust parametric reachability for timed automata

We review the known decidability and undecidability results for reachability in parametric timed automata. Then, we present a new proof of undecidability in dense time for open timed automata that avoids equalities in clock constraints. Our result shows that the undecidability of parametric timed automata does not follow from their ability to specify punctual constraints in a dense time domain.     

离散时段演算的符号模型验证

模型验证是对有限状态系统的一种形式化确认方法，近几年，模型验证方法已逐步扩展到实时系统应用中，为解决实时系统的模型验证问题，本文采用离散时段演算人实时系统规格说明的形式语言，用时间自动机作为实时系统的实现模型，对模型验证问题进行了细致的分析，并提出了一种具有实际应用价值的方法－商技术，该方法可以在避免当多个时间自动机并行组合时可能产生的状态空间组合爆炸问题，同时还可以简化整个模型验证问题。     

Symbolic model checking for probabilistic timed automata

Probabilistic timed automata are timed automata extended with discrete probability distributions, and can be used to model timed randomised protocols or fault-tolerant systems. We present symbolic model-checking algorithms for probabilistic timed automata to verify both qualitative temporal logic properties, corresponding to satisfaction with probability 0 or 1, and quantitative properties, corresponding to satisfaction with arbitrary probability. The algorithms operate on zones, which represent sets of valuations of the probabilistic timed automaton’s clocks. Our method considers only those system behaviours which guarantee the divergence of time with probability 1. The paper presents a symbolic framework for the verification of probabilistic timed automata against the probabilistic, timed temporal logic PTCTL. We also report on a prototype implementation of the algorithms using Difference Bound Matrices, and present the results of its application to the CSMA/CD and FireWire root contention protocol case studies.     

A Kleene–Schützenberger theorem for weighted timed automata

During the last years, weighted timed automata have received much interest in the real-time community. Weighted timed automata form an extension of timed automata and allow us to assign weights (costs) to both locations and edges. This model, introduced by Alur et al. (2001) and Behrmann et al. (2001), permits the treatment of continuous consumption of resources and has led to much research on scheduling problems, optimal reachability and model checking. Also, several authors have derived Kleene-type characterizations of (unweighted) timed automata and their accepted timed languages. The goal of this paper is to provide a characterization of the behaviours of weighted timed automata by rational power series. We define weighted timed automata with weights taken in an arbitrary semiring, resulting in a model that subsumes several weighted timed automata concepts of the literature. For our main result, we combine the methods of Schützenberger, a recent approach for a Kleene-type theorem for unweighted timed automata by Bouyer and Petit as well as new techniques. Our main result also implies Kleene-type theorems for several subclasses of weighted timed automata investigated before, e.g., for timed automata and timed automata with stopwatch observers.     

A study on shuffle, stopwatches and independently evolving clocks

We show that stopwatch automata are equivalent with timed shuffle expressions, an extension of timed regular expressions with the shuffle operation. Since the emptiness problem is undecidable for stopwatch automata, and hence also for timed shuffle expressions, we introduce a decidable subclass of stopwatch automata called partitioned stopwatch automata. We give for this class an equivalent subclass of timed shuffle expressions and investigate closure properties by showing that partitioned stopwatch automata are closed under union, concatenation, star, shuffle and renaming, but not under intersection. We also show that partitioned stopwatch automata are equivalent with distributed time-asynchronous automata, which are asynchronous compositions of timed automata in which time may evolve independently.     

Lower-bound-constrained runs in weighted timed automata

We investigate a number of problems related to infinite runs of weighted timed automata (with a single weight variable), subject to lower-bound constraints on the accumulated weight. Closing an open problem from Bouyer et al. (2008), we show that the existence of an infinite lower-bound-constrained run is—for us somewhat unexpectedly—undecidable for weighted timed automata with four or more clocks.This undecidability result assumes a fixed and known initial credit. We show that the related problem of existence of an initial credit for which there exists a feasible run is decidable in PSPACE. We also investigate the variant of these problems where only bounded-duration runs are considered, showing that this restriction makes our original problem decidable in  NEXPTIME. We prove that the universal versions of all those problems (i.e, checking that all the considered runs satisfy the lower-bound constraint) are decidable in PSPACE.Finally, we extend this study to multi-weighted timed automata: the existence of a feasible run becomes undecidable even for bounded duration, but the existence of initial credits remains decidable (in PSPACE).     

Quantitative analysis of weighted transition systems

We present a general framework for the analysis of quantitative and qualitative properties of reactive systems, based on a notion of weighted transition systems. We introduce and analyze three different types of distances on weighted transition systems, both in a linear and a branching version. Our quantitative notions appear to be reasonable extensions of the standard qualitative concepts, and the three different types introduced are shown to measure inequivalent properties.When applied to the formalism of weighted timed automata, we show that some standard decidability and undecidability results for timed automata extend to our quantitative setting.     

MSO logics for weighted timed automata

We aim to generalize Büchi’s fundamental theorem on the coincidence of recognizable and MSO-definable languages to a weighted timed setting. For this, we investigate weighted timed automata and show how we can extend Wilke’s relative distance logic with weights taken from an arbitrary semiring. We show that every formula in our logic can effectively be transformed into a weighted timed automaton, and vice versa. The results indicate the robustness of weighted timed automata and may also be used for specification purposes.     

有关时间自动机重置的若干问题的计算复杂性

自动机的重置序列也称为同步序列,具有以下特性：有限自动机通过运行重置序列w,可从任意一个未知的或无法观测到的状态q₀到达某个特定状态q_w.这仅依赖于w,而与开始运行w时的状态q₀无关.这一特性可用于部分可观察的复杂系统的自动恢复,而无需重启,甚至有时不能重启.基于此,重置问题自出现以来便得到关注和持续研究.最近几年,它被扩展到可以描述诸如分布式、嵌入式实时系统等复杂系统的无限状态模型上,比如时间自动机和寄存器自动机等.以时间自动机的重置问题的计算复杂性为研究对象,发现重置问题与可达性问题有着紧密的联系.主要贡献是：（1）利用时间自动机可达性问题的最新成果,完善完全的确定的时间自动机重置问题的计算复杂性结论;（2）对部分规约的确定的时间自动机,研究得出,即使在输入字母表大小减至2的情况下,其复杂性仍是PSPACE-完全的;特别地,在单时钟情况下是NLOGSPACE-完全的;（3）对完全的非确定的时间自动机,研究得出其D_i-可重置问题（i=1,2,3）是不可判定的,其重置问题与非确定的寄存器自动机重置问题在指数时间可以相互归约,通过证明指数时间归约相对高复杂性类具有封闭性,利用非确定的寄存器自动机的结论得出单时钟的时间自动机的重置问题是Ackermann-完全的、限界的重置问题是NEXPTIME-完全的.这些复杂性结论,说明关于时间自动机的重置问题大都是难解的,一方面,为时间系统的可重置性的检测和求解奠定坚实的理论基础,另一方面,为以后寻找具有高效算法的特殊结构的时间系统（即具有高效算法的问题子类）给予理论指导.     

Monitoring of Timed Discrete Events Systems With Interrupts

A framework is introduced for monitoring the interrupting faults in the timed discrete events systems. We introduce the notion of acceptable behavior of the system subjected to these faults: permanent or intermittent. The acceptable behavior of a system is modeled by a stopwatch automaton. The timed sub-spaces in the locations of the automaton delimit exactly the range of the acceptable behavior. They are synthesized using the techniques of reachability analysis of stopwatch automata in a way to detect the system faults as early as possible.     

Grid automata and supervisory control of dense real-time discrete event systems

We present a generalization of the classical supervisory control theory for discrete event systems to a setting of dense real-time systems modeled by Alur and Dill timed automata. The main problem involved is that in general the state space of a timed automaton is (uncountably) infinite. The solution is to reduce the dense time transition system to an appropriate finite discrete subautomaton, the grid automaton, which contains enough information to deal with the timed supervisory control problem (TSCP). The plant and the specifications region graphs are sampled for a granularity defined in a way that each state has an outgoing transition labeled with the same time amount. We redefine the controllability concept in the context of grid automata, and we provide necessary and sufficient solvability conditions under which the optimal solution to centralized supervisory control problems in timed discrete event systems under full observation can be obtained. The enhanced setting admits subsystem composition and the concept of forcible event. A simple example illustrates how the new method can be used to solve the TSCP.     

A scenario-matching approach to the description and model checking of real-time properties

A major obstacle in the technology transfer agenda of behavioral analysis and design methods is the need for logics or automata to express properties for control-intensive systems. Interaction-modeling notations may offer a replacement or a complement, with a practitioner-appealing and lightweight flavor, due partly to the sub specification of intended behavior by means of scenarios. We propose a novel approach consisting of engineering a new formal notation of this sort based on a simple compact declarative semantics: VTS (visual timed event scenarios). Scenarios represent event patterns, graphically depicting conditions over traces. They predicate general system events and provide features to describe complex properties not expressible with MSC-like notations. The underlying formalism supports partial orders and real-time constraints. The problem of checking whether a timed-automaton model has a matching trace is proven decidable. On top of this kernel, we introduce a notation to state properties over all system traces: conditional scenarios, allowing engineers to describe uniquely rich connections between antecedent and consequent portions of the scenario. An undecidability result is presented for the general case of the model-checking problem over dense-time domains, to later identify a decidable-yet practically relevant-subclass, where verification is solvable by generating antiscenarios expressed in the VTS-kernel notation.     

Model checking for probabilistic timed automata

Probabilistic timed automata (PTAs) are a formalism for modelling systems whose behaviour incorporates both probabilistic and real-time characteristics. Applications include wireless communication protocols, automotive network protocols and randomised security protocols. This paper gives an introduction to PTAs and describes techniques for analysing a wide range of quantitative properties, such as “the maximum probability of the airbag failing to deploy within 0.02 seconds”, “the maximum expected time for the protocol to terminate” or “the minimum expected energy consumption required to complete all tasks”. We present a temporal logic for specifying such properties and then give a survey of available model-checking techniques for formulae specified in this logic. We then describe two case studies in which PTAs are used for modelling and analysis: a probabilistic non-repudiation protocol and a task-graph scheduling problem.     

On the optimal reachability problem of weighted timed automata

We study the cost-optimal reachability problem for weighted timed automata such that positive and negative costs are allowed on edges and locations. By optimality, we mean an infimum cost as well as a supremum cost. We show that this problem is PSpace-Complete. Our proof uses techniques of linear programming, and thus exploits an important property of optimal runs: their time-transitions use a time τ which is arbitrarily close to an integer. We then propose an extension of the region graph, the weighted discrete graph, whose structure gives light on the way to solve the cost-optimal reachability problem. We also give an application of the cost-optimal reachability problem in the context of timed games. Research supported by the FRFC project “Centre Fédéré en Vérification” funded by the Belgian National Science Foundation (FNRS) under grant nr 2.4530.02.     

Model Checking Timed and Stochastic Properties with CSL^{TA}

Markov chains are a well-known stochastic process that provide a balance between being able to adequately model the system's behavior and being able to afford the cost of the model solution. The definition of stochastic temporal logics like continuous stochastic logic (CSL) and its variant asCSL, and of their model-checking algorithms, allows a unified approach to the verification of systems, allowing the mix of performance evaluation and probabilistic verification. In this paper we present the stochastic logic CSLTA, which is more expressive than CSL and asCSL, and in which properties can be specified using automata (more precisely, timed automata with a single clock). The extension with respect to expressiveness allows the specification of properties referring to the probability of a finite sequence of timed events. A typical example is the responsiveness property "with probability at least 0.75, a message sent at time 0 by a system A will be received before time 5 by system B and the acknowledgment will be back at A before time 7", a property that cannot be expressed in either CSL or asCSL. We also present a model-checking algorithm for CSLTA.     

On timed alternating simulation for concurrent timed games

We address the problem of alternating simulation refinement for concurrent timed games (TG). We show that checking timed alternating simulation between TG is EXPTIME-complete, and provide a logical characterization of this preorder in terms of a meaningful fragment of a new logic, TAMTL*. TAMTL* is an action-based timed extension of standard alternating-time temporal logic ATL*, which allows to quantify over strategies where the designated coalition of players is not responsible for blocking time. While for full TAMTL*, model-checking TG is undecidable, we show that for its fragment TAMTL, corresponding to the timed version of ATL, the problem is instead decidable and in EXPTIME.     

Optimal infinite scheduling for multi-priced timed automata

This paper is concerned with the derivation of infinite schedules for timed automata that are in some sense optimal. To cover a wide class of optimality criteria we start out by introducing an extension of the (priced) timed automata model that includes both costs and rewards as separate modelling features. A precise definition is then given of what constitutes optimal infinite behaviours for this class of models. We subsequently show that the derivation of optimal non-terminating schedules for such double-priced timed automata is computable. This is done by a reduction of the problem to the determination of optimal mean-cycles in finite graphs with weighted edges. This reduction is obtained by introducing the so-called corner-point abstraction, a powerful abstraction technique of which we show that it preserves optimal schedules. This work has been mostly done while visiting CISS at Aalborg University in Denmark and has been supported by CISS and by ACI Cortos, a program of the French Ministry of Research.