Symbolic verification of communication protocols with infinite state spaces using QDDs

Extended abstract
  • Bernard Boigelot
  • Patrice Godefroid
Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 1102)

Abstract

We study the verification of properties of communication protocols modeled by a finite set of finite-state machines that communicate by exchanging messages via unbounded FIFO queues. It is well-known that most interesting verification problems, such as deadlock detection, are undecidable for this class of systems. However, in practice, these verification problems may very well turn out to be decidable for a subclass containing most “real” protocols.

Motivated by this optimistic (and, we claim, realistic) observation, we present an algorithm that may construct a finite and exact representation of the state space of a communication protocol, even if this state space is infinite. Our algorithm performs a loop-first search in the state space of the protocol being analyzed. A loop-first search is a search technique that attempts to explore first the results of successive executions of loops in the protocol description (code). A new data structure named Queue-content Decision Diagram (QDD) is introduced for representing (possibly infinite) sets of queue-contents. Operations for manipulating QDDs during a loop-first search are presented.

A loop-first search using QDDs has been implemented, and experiments on several communication protocols with infinite state spaces have been performed. For these examples, our tool completed its search, and produced a finite symbolic representation for these infinite state

Keywords

Communication Protocol Global State Reachable State Protocol Description Verification Problem 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1996

Authors and Affiliations

  • Bernard Boigelot
    • 1
  • Patrice Godefroid
    • 2
  1. 1.Institut Montefiore, B23Université de LiègeLiège Sart-TilmanBelgium
  2. 2.Lucent Technologies - Bell LaboratoriesNapervilleUSA

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