Effective synchronizing algorithms

The notion of a synchronizing sequence plays an important role in the model-based testing of reactive systems, such as sequential circuits or communication protocols. The main problem in this approach is to find the shortest possible sequence which synchronizes the automaton being a model of the system under test. This can be done with a synchronizing algorithm. In this paper we analyze the synchronizing algorithms described in the literature, both exact (with exponential runtime) and greedy (polynomial). We investigate the implementation of the exact algorithm and show how this implementation can be optimized by use of some efficient data structures. We also propose a new greedy algorithm, which relies on some new heuristics. We compare our algorithms with the existing ones, with respect to both runtime