A Stochastic Game Approach to Masking Fault-Tolerance: Bisimulation and Quantification

Abstract: We introduce a formal notion of masking fault-tolerance between probabilistic transition systems based on a variant of probabilistic bisimulation (named masking simulation). We also provide the corresponding probabilistic game characterization. Even though these games could be infinite, we propose a symbolic way of representing them, such that it can be decided in polynomial time if there is a masking simulation between two probabilistic transition systems. We use this notion of masking to quantify the level of masking fault-tolerance exhibited by almost-sure failing systems, i.e., those systems that eventually fail with probability 1. The level of masking fault-tolerance of almost-sure failing systems can be calculated by solving a collection of functional equations. We produce this metric in a setting in which the minimizing player behaves in a strong fair way (mimicking the idea of fair environments), and limit our study to memoryless strategies due to the infinite nature of the game. We implemented these ideas in a prototype tool, and performed an experimental evaluation.