Hierarchy-based incremental analysis of communication protocols

The authors present an incremental strategy for reachability analysis of communication protocols modeled as sets of communicating finite state machines (CFSMs) with synchronous communication and direct naming. A set of CFSMs is organized into a hierarchy. The authors present an algorithm that, for a given hierarchy of a set M of CFSMs, incrementally composes and reduces subsets of CFSMs in M and finally produces a minimum CFSM describing the external behavior of M. It is also showed that this incremental reachability analysis guarantees the detection of global deadlocks. An algorithm for selecting a hierarchy for a set of CFSMs and some empirical results are provided