Real-time Regular Expression Matching

TL;DR

This paper addresses the exponential complexity in regular expression matching by proposing a theoretical and hardware solution for certain classes of regular languages, improving network intrusion detection capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining theory and hardware to mitigate exponential blow-up in automata for complex regular languages.

Findings

Theorems proving correctness and complexity bounds

Hardware implementation demonstrating feasibility

Enhanced performance in network intrusion detection systems

Abstract

This paper is devoted to finite state automata, regular expression matching, pattern recognition, and the exponential blow-up problem, which is the growing complexity of automata exponentially depending on regular expression length. This paper presents a theoretical and hardware solution to the exponential blow-up problem for some complicated classes of regular languages, which caused severe limitations in Network Intrusion Detection Systems work. The article supports the solution with theorems on correctness and complexity.