Zero-suppressed BDDs and their applications

Abstract.

In many real-life problems, we are often faced with manipulating sets of combinations. In this article, we study a special type of ordered binary decision diagram (OBDD), called zero-suppressed BDDs (ZBDDs). This data structure represents sets of combinations more efficiently than using original OBDDs. We discuss the basic data structures and algorithms for manipulating ZBDDs in contrast with the original OBDDs. We also present some practical applications of ZBDDs, such as solving combinatorial problems with unate cube set algebra, logic synthesis methods, Petri net processing, etc. We show that a ZBDD is a useful option in OBDD techniques, suitable for a part of the practical applications.