Symmetry Reduction in the ProB Model Checker

Model checking suffers from the state space explosion problem. One method to alleviate this problem is to exploit symmetries in the system, such that duplicate symmetric components of the state space are not explored – saving time during the checking process. This paper identifies symmetries in typical structures of the formal language of B, including relations, powersets and elements of sets, and presents a method for finding them through the modification of the well known graph isomorphism program, NAUTY. This work has been implemented in the ProB model checker and preliminary experiments indicate the idea holds much potential for improving the performance of model checking for B.