A Uniform (Bi-)Simulation-Based Framework for Reducing Tree Automata

In this paper, we address the problem of reducing the size of nondeterministic (bottom-up) tree automata. We propose a uniform framework that allows for combining various upward and downward bisimulation and simulation relations in order to obtain a language-preserving combined relation suitable for reducing tree automata without a need to determinise them. The framework generalises and extends several previous works and provides a broad spectrum of different relations yielding a possibility of a fine choice between the amount of reduction and the computational demands. We, moreover, provide a significantly improved way of computing the various combined (bi-)simulation relations. We analyse properties of the considered relations both theoretically as well as through a series of experiments.