The Computer Journal Advance Access originally published online on May 15, 2007
The Computer Journal 2007 50(4):403-420; doi:10.1093/comjnl/bxm009
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Model Checking Temporal Logics of Knowledge Via OBDDs1
2 School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, China
3 Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems, Griffith University, Brisbane, Qld 4111, Australia
4 Department of Computer Science, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, P.R. China
* Corresponding author: luo.xiangyu{at}yahoo.com
Received 14 June 2006; revised 4 December 2006
Model checking is a promising approach to automatic verification, which has concentrated on specification expressed in temporal logics. Comparatively little attention has been given to temporal logics of knowledge, although such logics have been proven to be very useful in the specifications of protocols for distributed systems. In this paper, we addressed the model checking problem for a temporal logic of knowledge (Halpern and Vardi's logic of CKLn). Based on the semantics of interpreted systems with local propositions, we developed an approach to symbolic CKLn model checking via Ordered Binary decision diagrams and implemented the corresponding symbolic model checker MCTK. In our approach to model checking specifications involving agents' knowledge, the knowledge modalities are eliminated via quantifiers over agents' non-observable variables. We then modelled the Dining Cryptographers protocol and the five-hands protocol for Russian Cards problem in MCTK. Via these two examples, we compare MCTK's empirical performance with two different state-of-the-art epistemic model checkers, MCK and MCMAS.
Key Words: model checking temporal reasoning reasoning about knowledge temporal logics of knowledge distributed AI
1 An earlier version of this paper appeared in Proceedings of AAAI 2004 [1].