Verification Techniques for a Network Algebra

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Brodo, Linda^{a; *} | Olarte, Carlos^b

Affiliations: [a] Università degli Studi di Sassari, Italy. brodo@uniss.it | [b] ECT, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. carlos.olarte@gmail.com

Correspondence: [*] Address for correspondence: Università degli Studi di Sassari, Italy.

Abstract: The Core Network Algebra (CNA) is a model for concurrency that extends the point-to-point communication discipline of Milner’s CCS with multiparty interactions. Links are used to build chains describing how information flows among the different agents participating in a multiparty interaction. The inherent non-determinism in deciding both the number of participants in an interaction, and how they synchronize, makes it difficult to devise verification techniques for this language. We propose a symbolic semantics and a symbolic bisimulation for CNA which are more amenable for automating reasoning. Unlike the operational semantics of CNA, the symbolic semantics is finitely branching and it represents, compactly, a possibly infinite number of transitions. We give necessary and sufficient conditions to efficiently check the validity of symbolic configurations. We also propose the Symbolic Link Modal Logic, a seamless extension of the Hennessy-Milner logic which is able to characterize the (symbolic) transitions of CNA processes. Finally, we specify both the symbolic semantics and the modal logic as an executable rewriting theory. We thus obtain several verification procedures to analyze CNA processes.

Keywords: Concurrency theory, process calculi, CCS, symbolic semantics, verification

DOI: 10.3233/FI-2020-1890

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 172, no. 1, pp. 1-38, 2020