Recursive Markov Chains (RMCs) ([EY05]) are a natural abstract model of procedural probabilistic programs and related systems involving recursion and probability. They succinctly define a class of denumerable Markov chains that generalize multi-type branching (stochastic) processes. In this paper, we study the problem of model checking an RMC against a given ω-regular specification. Namely, given an RMC A and a Büchi automaton B, we wish to know the probability that an execution of A is accepted by B. We establish a number of strong upper bounds, as well as lower bounds, both for qualitative problems (is the probability = 1, or = 0?), and for quantitative problems (is the probability ≥ p?, or, approximate the probability to within a desired precision). Among these, we show that qualitative model checking for general RMCs can be decided in PSPACE in |A| and EXPTIME in |B|, and when A is either a single-exit RMC or when the total number of entries and exits in A is bounded, it can be decided in polynomial time in |A|. We then show that quantitative model checking can also be done in PSPACE in |A|, and in EXPSPACE in |B|. When B is deterministic, all our complexities in |B| come down by one exponential. For lower bounds, we show that the qualitative model checking problem, even for a fixed RMC, is EXPTIME-complete. On the other hand, even for reachability analysis, we showed in [EY05] that our PSPACE upper bounds in A can not be improved upon without a breakthrough on a well-known open problem in the complexity of numerical computation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.
CITATION STYLE
Etessami, K., & Yannakakis, M. (2005). Algorithmic verification of recursive probabilistic state machines. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3440, pp. 253–270). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-31980-1_17
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