Efficient Normalization of Linear Temporal Logic

Abstract

In the mid 1980s, Lichtenstein, Pnueli, and Zuck proved a classical theorem stating that every formula of Past LTL (the extension of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) with past operators) is equivalent to a formula of the form ⋀ⁿ_i=1GF φ_i ∨ FG ψ_i where φ_i and ψ_i contain only past operators. Some years later, Chang, Manna, and Pnueli built on this result to derive a similar normal form for LTL. Both normalization procedures have a non-elementary worst-case blow-up, and follow an involved path from formulas to counter-free automata to star-free regular expressions and back to formulas. We improve on both points. We present direct and purely syntactic normalization procedures for LTL, yielding a normal form very similar to the one by Chang, Manna, and Pnueli, that exhibit only a single exponential blow-up. As an application, we derive a simple algorithm to translate LTL into deterministic Rabin automata. The algorithm normalizes the formula, translates it into a special very weak alternating automaton, and applies a simple determinization procedure, valid only for these special automata.