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Relating timed and register automata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2014

DIEGO FIGUEIRA*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, United Kingdom INRIA, ENS Cachan, LSV, 61 avenue du Président Wilson 94235 Cachan, France Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw, Banacha 2, 02-097 Warszawa, Poland Email: dfigueir@inf.ed.ac.uk, ph209519@mimuw.edu.pl, sl@mimuw.edu.pl
PIOTR HOFMAN
Affiliation:
Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw, Banacha 2, 02-097 Warszawa, Poland Email: dfigueir@inf.ed.ac.uk, ph209519@mimuw.edu.pl, sl@mimuw.edu.pl
SŁAWOMIR LASOTA
Affiliation:
Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw, Banacha 2, 02-097 Warszawa, Poland Email: dfigueir@inf.ed.ac.uk, ph209519@mimuw.edu.pl, sl@mimuw.edu.pl
*
Corresponding author.

Abstract

Timed and register automata are well-known models of computation over timed and data words, respectively. The former has clocks that allow to test the lapse of time between two events, whilst the latter includes registers that can store data values for later comparison. Although these two models behave differently in appearance, several decision problems have the same (un)decidability and complexity results for both models. As a prominent example, emptiness is decidable for alternating automata with one clock or register, both with non-primitive recursive complexity. This is not by chance.

This work confirms that there is indeed a tight relationship between the two models. We show that a run of a timed automaton can be simulated by a register automaton over ordered data domain, and conversely that a run of a register automaton can be simulated by a timed automaton. These are exponential time reductions hold both in the finite and infinite words settings. Our results allow to transfer decidability results back and forth between these two kinds of models, as well complexity results modulo an exponential time reduction. We justify the usefulness of these reductions by obtaining new results on register automata.

Type
Paper
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

An extended abstract of this work appeared as Figueira et al. (2010).

The first author acknowledges the financial support of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme within the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission, under the FET-Open grant agreement FOX, number FP7-ICT-233599. The second and third authors acknowledge the financial support of the Polish Ministry of Science grant nr N N206 567840.

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