Description and analysis of a bottom-up DFA minimization algorithm

We establish linear-time reductions between the minimization of a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) and the conjunction of 3 subproblems: the minimization of a strongly connected DFA, the isomorphism problem for a set of strongly connected minimized DFAs, and the minimization of a connected DFA consisting in two strongly connected components, both of which are minimized. We apply this procedure to minimize, in linear time, automata whose nontrivial strongly connected components are cycles.