Bounded model checking for the universal fragment of CTL

Bounded Model Checking (BMC) has been recently introduced as an efficient verification method for reactive systems. BMC based on SAT methods consists in searching for a counterexample of a particular length and generating a propositional formula that is satisfiable iff such a counterexample exists. This new technique has been introduced by E. Clarke et a]. for model checking of linear time temporal logic (LTL). Our paper shows how the concept of bounded model checking can be extended to ACTL (the universal fragment of CTL). The implementation of the algorithm for Elementary Net Systems is described together with the experimental results.