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Population protocols [Angluin et al., PODC, 2004] are a formal model of sensor networks consisting of identical mobile devices. Two devices can interact and thereby change their states. Computations are infinite sequences of interactions satisfying a strong fairness constraint. A population protocol is well-specified if for every initial configuration C of devices, and every computation starting at C, all devices eventually agree on a consensus value depending only on C. If a protocol is well-specified, then it is said to compute the predicate that assigns to each initial configuration its consensus value. While the predicates computable by well-specified protocols have been extensively studied, the two basic verification problems remain open: is a given protocol well-specified? Does a protocol compute a given predicate? We prove that both problems are decidable. Our results also prove decidability of a natural question about home spaces of Petri nets.
@InProceedings{esparza_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2015.470,
author = {Esparza, Javier and Ganty, Pierre and Leroux, J\'{e}r\^{o}me and Majumdar, Rupak},
title = {{Verification of Population Protocols}},
booktitle = {26th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2015)},
pages = {470--482},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-939897-91-0},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2015},
volume = {42},
editor = {Aceto, Luca and de Frutos Escrig, David},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2015.470},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-53770},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2015.470},
annote = {Keywords: Population protocols, Petri nets, parametrized verification}
}