SAT-BASED IMAGE COMPUTATION WITH APPLICATION IN REACHABILITY ANALYSIS

A method of performing image or pre-image computation for a system is disclosed. The method comprises representing the system by a finite state model; representing state sets using Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs); performing a satisfiabilty checking (SAT) based backtrack search algorithm, wherein, the SAT decomposes the search over an entire solution space into multiple sub-problems, and wherein a BDD-based image computation is used to solve each sub-problem by enumerating multiple solutions from the solution space. Further, a method for pruning a search space in a SAT procedure is disclosed. The method comprises using BDD Bounding against an implicit disjunction or conjunction of a given set of BDDs; continuing search if a partial assignment of variables satisfies the implicit disjunction or conjunction, and backtracking if a partial assignment of variables does not satisfy the implicit disjunction or conjunction.