Abstract.
This paper continues our study of the verification problem for
infinite-state systems featuring both
nondeterministic and probabilistic choice. In an earlier paper we
defined symbolic probabilistic systems,
an extension of the framework of symbolic transition systems due to
Henzinger et. al., and
considered the problem of deciding the maximal probability of reaching a
set of
target states. A symbolic probabilistic system is an infinite-state
system equipped with an algebra
of symbolic operators on its state space, additionally extended with a
symbolic encoding of
probabilistic transitions to obtain a model for infinite-state
probabilistic systems.
In this paper we generalise the notion of symbolic probabilistic systems
and consider the
minimal reachability problem, that is, the problem of computing the
minimal probability of
reaching a given set of target states. An exact answer to this problem
is obtained algorithmically
via iteration of a refined version of the classical predecessor
operation, combined with
intersection and set difference operations. As in the previous work on
symbolic transition
systems, our state space exploration algorithm is semi-decidable for
infinite-state systems.
Together with the earlier work concerning the maximal reachability
problem, the
results presented here yield a semi-decidable algorithm for model
checking symbolic
systems against the probabilistic temporal logic PCTL.
We illustrate our approach with the help of probabilistic timed
automata, for which previous verification
techniques suffered from an unnecessarily fine subdivisions of the state
space, or which returned only
estimates of the actual probabilities.
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