Optimizing Symbolic Model Checking for Constraint-Rich Models

• Main Authors: Bwolen Yang, Reid Simmons, Randal E. Bryant, David R. O’Hallaron
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Springer 1999
• Subjects: symbolic model checking; Binary Decision Diagram (BDD; timeinvariant constraints; redundant state-variable elimination; Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.40.6839; http://www.ius.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/bwolen/www/papers/cav99-tr.pdf

This paper presents optimizations for verifying systems with complex timeinvariant constraints. These constraints arise naturally from modeling physical systems, e.g., in establishing the relationship between different components in a system. To verify constraint-rich systems, we propose two new optimizations. The first optimization is a simple, yet powerful, extension of the conjunctivepartitioning algorithm. The second is a collection of BDD-based macro-extraction and macro-expansion algorithms to remove state variables. We show that these two optimizations are essential in verifying constraint-rich problems; in particular, this work has enabled the verification of fault diagnosis models of the Nomad robot (an Antarctic meteorite explorer) and of the NASA Deep Space One spacecraft.