LTL to Smaller Self-Loop Alternating Automata and Back

Abstract

Self-loop alternating automata (SLAA) with Büchi or co-Büchi acceptance are popular intermediate formalisms in translations of LTL to deterministic or nondeterministic automata. This paper considers SLAA with generic transition-based Emerson-Lei acceptance and presents translations of LTL to these automata and back. Importantly, the translation of LTL to SLAA with generic acceptance produces considerably smaller automata than previous translations of LTL to Büchi or co-Büchi SLAA. Our translation is already implemented in the tool LTL3TELA, where it helps to produce small deterministic or nondeterministic automata for given LTL formulae.

This is a full version of the paper accepted to ICTAC 2019