A Boyer-Moore Type Algorithm for Timed Pattern Matching

Abstract

The timed pattern matching problem is formulated by Ulus et al. and has been actively studied since, with its evident application in monitoring real-time systems. The problem takes as input a timed word/signal and a timed pattern (specified either by a timed regular expression or by a timed automaton); and it returns the set of those intervals for which the given timed word, when restricted to the interval, matches the given pattern. We contribute a Boyer-Moore type optimization in timed pattern matching, relying on the classic Boyer-Moore string matching algorithm and its extension to (untimed) pattern matching by Watson and Watson. We assess its effect through experiments; for some problem instances our Boyer-Moore type optimization achieves speed-up by two times, indicating its potential in real-world monitoring tasks where data sets tend to be massive.