Uniform Labeled Transition Systems for Nondeterministic, Probabilistic, and Stochastic Processes

Rate transition systems (RTS) are a special kind of transition systems introduced for defining the stochastic behavior of processes and for associating continuous-time Markov chains with process terms. The transition relation assigns to each process, for each action, the set of possible futures paired with a measure indicating the rates at which they are reached. RTS have been shown to be a uniform model for providing an operational semantics to many stochastic process algebras. In this paper, we define Uniform Labeled TRAnsition Systems (ULTraS) as a generalization of RTS that can be exploited to uniformly describe also nondeterministic and probabilistic variants of process algebras. We then present a general notion of behavioral relation for ULTraS that can be instantiated to capture bisimulation and trace equivalences for fully nondeterministic, fully probabilistic, and fully stochastic processes.