Forward and Backward Simulations - Part I: Untimed Systems

A unified, comprehensive presentation of simulation techniques for verification of concurrent systems is given, in terms of a simple untimed automaton model. In particular, (1) refinements, (2) forward and backward simulations, (3) hybrid forward-backward and backward-forward simulations, and (4) history and prophecy relations are defined. History and prophecy relations are abstract versions of the history and prophecy variables of Abadi and Lamport, as well as the auxiliary variables of Owicki and Gries. Relationships between the different types of simulations, as well as soundness and completeness results, are stated and proved. Finally, it is shown how invariants can be incorporated into all the simulations. Even though many results are presented here for the first time, this paper can also be read as a survey (in a simple setting) of the research literature on simulation techniques. The development for untimed automata is designed to support a similar development for timed automata..