On local characterization of global timed bisimulation for abstract continuous-time systems

Abstract

We consider two notions of timed bisimulation on states of continuous-time dynamical systems: global and local timed bisimulation. By analogy with the notion of a bisimulation relation on states of a labeled transition system which requires the existence of matching transitions starting from states in such a relation, local timed bisimulation requires the existence of sufficiently short (locally defined) matching trajectories. Global timed bisimulation requires the existence of arbitrarily long matching trajectories. For continuous-time systems the notion of a global bisimulation is stronger than the notion of a local bisimulation and its definition has a non-local character. In this paper we give a local characterization of global timed bisimulation. More specifically, we consider a large class of abstract dynamical systems called Nondeterministic Complete Markovian Systems (NCMS) which covers various concrete continuous and discrete-continuous (hybrid) dynamical models and introduce the notion of an f+-timed bisimulation, where f+ is a so called extensibility measure. This notion has a local character. We prove that it is equivalent to global timed bisimulation on states of a NCMS. In this way we give a local characterization of the notion of a global timed bisimulation.