Deciding and Axiomatizing ST Bisimulation for a Process Algebra with Recursion and Action Refinement
Abstract Due to the complex nature of bisimulation equivalences which express some form of history dependence, it turned out to be problematic to axiomatize them for non trivial classes of systems. Here we introduce the idea of “compositional level-wise renaming” which gives rise to the new possibility of axiomatizing the class of history dependent bisimulations with slight modifications to the machinery for standard bisimulation. We propose two techniques, which are based on this idea, in the special case of the ST semantics, defined for terms of a process algebra with recursion. The first technique, which is more intuitive, is based on dynamic names, allowing weak ST bisimulation to be decided and axiomatized for all processes that possess a finite state interleaving semantics. The second technique, which is based on pointers, preserves the possibility of deciding and axiomatizing weak ST bisimulation also when an action refinement operator P [ a Q ] is considered.