In this paper we study the equivalence of nondeterministic automata pairing the concept of a bisimulation with the recently introduced concept of a uniform relation. In this symbiosis, uniform relations serve as equivalence relations which relate states of two possibly different nondeterministic automata, and bisimulations ensure compatibility with the transitions, initial and terminal states of these automata. We define six types of bisimulations, but due to the duality we discuss three of them: forward, backward-forward, and weak forward bisimulations. For each od these three types of bisimulations we provide a procedure which decides whether there is a bisimulation of this type between two automata, and when it exists, the same procedure computes the greatest one. We also show that there is a uniform forward bisimulation between two automata if and only if the factor automata with respect to the greatest forward bisimulation equivalences on these automata are isomorphic. We prove a similar theorem for weak forward bisimulations, using the concept of a weak forward isomorphism instead of an isomorphism. We also give examples that explain the relationships between the considered types of bisimulations.
Probabilistic automata were introduced by Rabin in 1963 as language acceptors. Two automata are equivalent if and only if they accept each word with the same probability. On the other side, in the process algebra community, probabilistic automata were re-proposed by Segala in 1995 which are more general than Rabin's automata. Bisimulations have been proposed for Segala's automata to characterize the equivalence between them. So far the two notions of equivalences and their characteristics have been studied mostly independently. In this paper, we consider Segala's automata, and propose a novel …
Simulations and bisimulations between two fuzzy automata over a complete residuated lattice were defined by Ćirić et al. (2012) as fuzzy relations between the sets of states of the automata. However, they act as a crisp relationship between the automata. In particular, if there exists a (forward) bisimulation between two fuzzy automata, then the fuzzy languages recognized by them are crisply equal. Approximate simulations and bisimulations introduced by Stanimirović et al. (2020) aim at fuzzifying this phenomenon. However, they are defined only for fuzzy automata over a complete Heyting algebr…
We develop a new bisimulation (pseudo)metric for weighted finite automata (WFA) that generalizes Boreale's linear bisimulation relation. Our metrics are induced by seminorms on the state space of WFA. Our development is based on spectral properties of sets of linear operators. In particular, the joint spectral radius of the transition matrices of WFA plays a central role. We also study continuity properties of the bisimulation pseudometric, establish an undecidability result for computing the metric, and give a preliminary account of applications to spectral learning of weighted automata.
Weak bisimilarity is a distribution-based equivalence notion for Markov automata. It has gained some popularity as the coarsest reasonable behavioural equivalence on Markov automata. This paper studies a strictly coarser notion: Late weak bisimilarity enjoys valuable properties if restricting to important subclasses of schedulers: Trace distribution equivalence is implied for partial information schedulers, and compositionality is preserved by distributed schedulers. The intersection of the two scheduler classes thus spans a coarser and still reasonable compositional theory of Markov automata.
Deciding in an efficient way weak probabilistic bisimulation in the context of Probabilistic Automata is an open problem for about a decade. In this work we close this problem by proposing a procedure that checks in polynomial time the existence of a weak combined transition satisfying the step condition of the bisimulation. We also present several extensions of weak combined transitions, such as hyper-transitions and the new concepts of allowed weak combined and hyper-transitions and of equivalence matching, that turn out to be verifiable in polynomial time as well. These results set the grou…
Nondeterministic automata may be viewed as succinct programs implementing deterministic automata, i.e. complete specifications. Converting a given deterministic automaton into a small nondeterministic one is known to be computationally very hard; in fact, the ensuing decision problem is PSPACE-complete. This paper stands in stark contrast to the status quo. We restrict attention to subatomic nondeterministic automata, whose individual states accept unions of syntactic congruence classes. They are general enough to cover almost all structural results concerning nondeterministic state-minimality…
In 1978 Sakoda and Sipser raised the question of the cost, in terms of size of representations, of the transformation of two-way and one-way nondeterministic automata into equivalent two-way deterministic automata. Despite all the attempts, the question has been answered only for particular cases (e.g., restrictions of the class of simulated automata or of the class of simulating automata). However the problem remains open in the general case, the best-known upper bound being exponential. We present a new approach in which unrestricted nondeterministic finite automata are simulated by determin…
We study three notions of directability of fuzzy automata akin to the D1-, D2- and D3-directability of nondeterministic automata. Thus an input word $w$ of a fuzzy automaton is D1-directing if a fixed single state is reachable by $w$ from all states, D2-directing if exactly the same states are reachable by $w$ from every state, and D3-directing if there is a state reachable by $w$ from every state. We study the various sets of directing words of fuzzy automata, prove that the directability properties are decidable, and show how such results can be deduced from the theory of directable nondeter…
In this paper we consider the class of lambda-nondeterministic linear automata as a model of the class of linear languages. As usual in other automata models, lambda-moves do not increase the acceptance power. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce the deterministic linear automata and even linear automata, i.e. the natural restriction of nondeterministic linear automata for the deterministic and even linear language classes, respectively. In particular, there are different, but not equivalents, proposals for the class of "deterministic" linear languages. We proved here that the c…
The concept of Deterministic Finite Cover Automata (DFCA) was introduced at WIA '98, as a more compact representation than Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) for finite languages. In some cases representing a finite language, Nondeterministic Finite Automata (NFA) may significantly reduce the number of states used. The combined power of the succinctness of the representation of finite languages using both cover languages and non-determinism has been suggested, but never systematically studied. In the present paper, for nondeterministic finite cover automata (NFCA) and l-nondeterministic finit…
We investigate the conversion of one-way nondeterministic finite automata and context-free grammars into Parikh equivalent one-way and two-way deterministic finite automata, from a descriptional complexity point of view. We prove that for each one-way nondeterministic automaton with $n$ states there exist Parikh equivalent one-way and two-way deterministic automata with $e^{O(\sqrt{n \ln n})}$ and $p(n)$ states, respectively, where $p(n)$ is a polynomial. Furthermore, these costs are tight. In contrast, if all the words accepted by the given automaton contain at least two different letters, th…
We introduce saturation of nondeterministic tree automata, a technique that consists of adding new transitions to an automaton while preserving its language. We implemented our algorithm on minotaut - a module of the tree automata library libvata that reduces the size of automata by merging states and removing superfluous transitions - and we show how saturation can make subsequent merge and transition-removal operations more effective. Thus we obtain a Ptime algorithm that reduces the size of tree automata even more than before. Additionally, we explore how minotaut alone can play an importan…
Probabilistic automata were introduced by Rabin in 1963 as language acceptors. Two automata are equivalent if and only if they accept each word with the same probability. On the other side, in the process algebra community, probabilistic automata were re-proposed by Segala in 1995 which are more general than Rabin's automata. Bisimulations have been proposed for Segala's automata to characterize the equivalence between them. So far the two notions of equivalences and their characteristics have been studied most independently. In this paper, we consider Segala's automata, and propose a novel no…
This paper develops a decision algorithm for weak bisimulation on Markov Automata (MA). For that purpose, different notions of vanishing state (a concept known from the area of Generalised Stochastic Petri Nets) are defined. Vanishing states are shown to be essential for relating the concepts of (state-based) naive weak bisimulation and (distribution-based) weak bisimulation. The bisimulation algorithm presented here follows the partition-refinement scheme and has exponential time complexity.
We present an efficient algorithm to reduce the size of nondeterministic tree automata, while retaining their language. It is based on new transition pruning techniques, and quotienting of the state space w.r.t. suitable equivalences. It uses criteria based on combinations of downward and upward simulation preorder on trees, and the more general downward and upward language inclusions. Since tree-language inclusion is EXPTIME-complete, we describe methods to compute good approximations in polynomial time. We implemented our algorithm as a module of the well-known libvata tree automata library,…
Algorithms for (nondeterministic) finite-state tree automata (FTAs) are often tested on random FTAs, in which all internal transitions are equiprobable. The run-time results obtained in this manner are usually overly optimistic as most such generated random FTAs are trivial in the sense that the number of states of an equivalent minimal deterministic FTA is extremely small. It is demonstrated that nontrivial random FTAs are obtained only for a narrow band of transition probabilities. Moreover, an analytic analysis yields a formula to approximate the transition probability that yields the most …
We introduce a new measure on regular languages: their nondeterministic syntactic complexity. It is the least degree of any extension of the `canonical boolean representation' of the syntactic monoid. Equivalently, it is the least number of states of any subatomic nondeterministic acceptor. It turns out that essentially all previous structural work on nondeterministic state-minimality computes this measure. Our approach rests on an algebraic interpretation of nondeterministic finite automata as deterministic finite automata endowed with semilattice structure. Crucially, the latter form a self-…
University of Ni s, Faculty of Sciences；University of Kragujevac, Technical faculty in Ca cak, Svetog Save 65, P. O. Box 131, 32000 Ca cak, Serbia
Bisimulations have been widely used in many areas of computer science to model equivalence between various systems, and to reduce the number of states of these systems, whereas uniform fuzzy relations have recently been introduced as a means to model the fuzzy equivalence between elements of two possible different sets. Here we use the conjunction of these two concepts as a powerful tool in the study of equivalence between fuzzy automata. We prove that a uniform fuzzy relation between fuzzy automata $\cal A$ and $\cal B$ is a forward bisimulation if and only if its kernel and co-kernel are for…
University of Niš（尼什大学）；University of Kragujevac（克拉古耶瓦茨大学）
Recently, two types of simulations (forward and backward simulations) and four types of bisimulations (forward, backward, forward-backward, and backward-forward bisimulations) between fuzzy automata have been introduced. If there is at least one simulation/bisimulation of some of these types between the given fuzzy automata, it has been proved that there is the greatest simulation/bisimulation of this kind. In the present paper, for any of the above-mentioned types of simulations/bisimulations we provide an effective algorithm for deciding whether there is a simulation/bisimulation of this typ…
We explore language semantics for automata combining probabilistic and nondeterministic behavior. We first show that there are precisely two natural semantics for probabilistic automata with nondeterminism. For both choices, we show that these automata are strictly more expressive than deterministic probabilistic automata, and we prove that the problem of checking language equivalence is undecidable by reduction from the threshold problem. However, we provide a discounted metric that can be computed to arbitrarily high precision.
Consider nondeterministic finite automata recognizing base-k positional notation of numbers. Assume that numbers are read starting from their least significant digits. It is proved that if two sets of numbers S and T are represented by nondeterministic automata of m and n states, respectively, then their sum {s+t | s in S, t in T} is represented by a nondeterministic automaton with 2mn+2m+2n+1 states. Moreover, this number of states is necessary in the worst case for all k>=9.
A two-dimensional finite automaton has a read-only input head that moves in four directions on a finite array of cells labelled by symbols of the input alphabet. A three-way two-dimensional automaton is prohibited from making upward moves, while a two-way two-dimensional automaton can only move downward and rightward. We show that the language emptiness problem for unary three-way nondeterministic two-dimensional automata is NP-complete, and is in P for general-alphabet two-way nondeterministic two-dimensional automata. We show that the language equivalence problem for two-way deterministic tw…
We examine the NFA minimization problem in terms of atomic NFA's, that is, NFA's in which the right language of every state is a union of atoms, where the atoms of a regular language are non-empty intersections of complemented and uncomplemented left quotients of the language. We characterize all reduced atomic NFA's of a given language, that is, those NFA's that have no equivalent states. Using atomic NFA's, we formalize Sengoku's approach to NFA minimization and prove that his method fails to find all minimal NFA's. We also formulate the Kameda-Weiner NFA minimization in terms of quotients a…
Probabilistic automata constitute a versatile and elegant model for concurrent probabilistic systems. They are equipped with a compositional theory supporting abstraction, enabled by weak probabilistic bisimulation serving as the reference notion for summarising the effect of abstraction. This paper considers probabilistic automata augmented with costs. It extends the notions of weak transitions in probabilistic automata in such a way that the costs incurred along a weak transition are captured. This gives rise to cost-preserving and cost-bounding variations of weak probabilistic bisimilarity,…
We study alternating good-for-games (GFG) automata, i.e., alternating automata where both conjunctive and disjunctive choices can be resolved in an online manner, without knowledge of the suffix of the input word still to be read. We show that they can be exponentially more succinct than both their nondeterministic and universal counterparts. Furthermore, we lift many results from nondeterministic parity GFG automata to alternating ones: a single exponential determinisation procedure, an Exptime upper bound to the GFGness problem, a PTime algorithm for the GFGness problem of weak automata, and…
The deterministic membership problem for timed automata asks whether the timed language recognised by a nondeterministic timed automaton can be recognised by a deterministic timed automaton. We show that the problem is decidable when the input automaton is a one-clock nondeterministic timed automaton without epsilon transitions and the number of clocks of the deterministic timed automaton is fixed. We show that the problem in all the other cases is undecidable, i.e., when either 1) the input nondeterministic timed automaton has two clocks or more, or 2) it uses epsilon transitions, or 3) the n…
We follow a connection between tight determinisation and complementation and establish a complementation procedure from parity automata to nondeterministic Büchi automata and prove it to be tight up to an $O(n)$ factor, where $n$ is the size of the nondeterministic parity automaton. This factor does not depend on the number of priorities.
We study the complexity of basic regular operations on languages represented by incomplete deterministic or nondeterministic automata, in which all states are final. Such languages are known to be prefix-closed. We get tight bounds on both incomplete and nondeterministic state complexity of complement, intersection, union, concatenation, star, and reversal on prefix-closed languages.
We introduce the category of dependency automata. A dependency automaton consists of two nondeterministic finite automata, with a relation between their states satisfying conditions. This category is equivalent to deterministic finite automata interpreted in join-semilattices i.e. JSL-dfas. The canonical dependency automaton accepting $L$ amounts to the state-minimal dfas for $L$ and $rev(L)$ connected by the `dependency relation'. We describe many canonical JSL-dfas as dependency automata and also explain/extend Brzozowski's algorithm. Call an nfa `subatomic' if its individual states accept a…
In this paper we revisit Safra's determinization constructions for automata on infinite words. We show how to construct deterministic automata with fewer states and, most importantly, parity acceptance conditions. Determinization is used in numerous applications, such as reasoning about tree automata, satisfiability of CTL*, and realizability and synthesis of logical specifications. The upper bounds for all these applications are reduced by using the smaller deterministic automata produced by our construction. In addition, the parity acceptance conditions allows to use more efficient algorithm…
Self-loop alternating automata (SLAA) with Büchi or co-Büchi acceptance are popular intermediate formalisms in translations of LTL to deterministic or nondeterministic automata. This paper considers SLAA with generic transition-based Emerson-Lei acceptance and presents translations of LTL to these automata and back. Importantly, the translation of LTL to SLAA with generic acceptance produces considerably smaller automata than previous translations of LTL to Büchi or co-Büchi SLAA. Our translation is already implemented in the tool LTL3TELA, where it helps to produce small deterministic or nond…
We define a new subclass of nondeterministic finite automata for prefix-closed languages called Flanked Finite Automata (FFA). We show that this class enjoys good complexity properties while preserving the succinctness of nondeterministic automata. In particular, we show that the universality problem for FFA is in linear time and that language inclusion can be checked in polynomial time. A useful application of FFA is to provide an efficient way to compute the quotient and inclusion of regular languages without the need to use the powerset construction. These operations are the building blocks…
The question whether P equals NP revolves around the discrepancy between active production and mere verification by Turing machines. In this paper, we examine the analogous problem for finite transducers and automata. Every nondeterministic finite transducer defines a binary relation associating each input word with all output words that the transducer can successfully produce on the given input. Finite-valued transducers are those for which there is a finite upper bound on the number of output words that the relation associates with every input word. We characterize finite-valued, functional,…
Model checking timed automata becomes increasingly complex with the increase in the number of clocks. Hence it is desirable that one constructs an automaton with the minimum number of clocks possible. The problem of checking whether there exists a timed automaton with a smaller number of clocks such that the timed language accepted by the original automaton is preserved is known to be undecidable. In this paper, we give a construction, which for any given timed automaton produces a timed bisimilar automaton with the least number of clocks. Further, we show that such an automaton with the minim…
We present a novel bit-parallel representation, based on the run-length encoding, of the nondeterministic KMP and suffix automata for a string $P$ with at least two distinct symbols. Our method is targeted to the case of long strings over small alphabets and complements the method of Cantone et al. (2012), which is effective for long strings over large alphabets. Our encoding requires $O((σ+ m)\lceil ρ/ w\rceil)$ space and allows one to simulate the automata on a string in time $O(\lceil ρ/ w\rceil)$ per transition, where $σ$ is the alphabet size, $m$ is the length of $P$, $ρ$ is the length of…
We consider two natural problems about nondeterministic finite automata. First, given such an automaton M of n states, and a length l, does M accept a word of length l? We show that the classic problem of triangle-free graph recognition reduces to this problem, and give an O(n^ω (log n)^{1+ε} log l)-time algorithm to solve it, where ω is the optimal exponent for matrix multiplication. Second, provided L(M) is finite, we consider the problem of listing the lengths of all words accepted by M. Although this problem seems like it might be significantly harder, we show that this problem can be solv…
An experiment is described that confirms the security of a well-studied class of cryptographic protocols (Dolev-Yao intruder model) can be verified by two-way nondeterministic pushdown automata (2NPDA). A nondeterministic pushdown program checks whether the intersection of a regular language (the protocol to verify) and a given Dyck language containing all canceling words is empty. If it is not, an intruder can reveal secret messages sent between trusted users. The verification is guaranteed to terminate in cubic time at most on a 2NPDA-simulator. The interpretive approach used in this experim…
There are different categorical approaches to variations of transition systems and their bisimulations. One is coalgebra for a functor G, where a bisimulation is defined as a span of G-coalgebra homomorphism. Another one is in terms of path categories and open morphisms, where a bisimulation is defined as a span of open morphisms. This similarity is no coincidence: given a functor G, fulfilling certain conditions, we derive a path-category for pointed G-coalgebras and lax homomorphisms, such that the open morphisms turn out to be precisely the G-coalgebra homomorphisms. The above construction …
Let $NFA_b(q)$ denote the set of languages accepted by nondeterministic finite automata with $q$ states over an alphabet with $b$ letters. Let $B_n$ denote the set of words of length $n$. We give a quadratic lower bound on the VC dimension of \[ NFA_2(q)\cap B_n = \{L\cap B_n \mid L \in NFA_2(q)\} \] as a function of $q$. Next, the work of Gruber and Holzer (2007) gives an upper bound for the nondeterministic state complexity of finite languages contained in $B_n$, which we strengthen using our methods. Finally, we give some theoretical and experimental results on the dependence on $n$ of the …
Checking whether two pushdown automata with restricted silent actions are weakly bisimilar was shown decidable by Sénizergues (1998, 2005). We provide the first known complexity upper bound for this famous problem, in the equivalent setting of first-order grammars. This ACKERMANN upper bound is optimal, and we also show that strong bisimilarity is primitive-recursive when the number of states of the automata is fixed.
