  Given a formula in quantifier-free Presburger arithmetic, if it has a
satisfying solution, there is one whose size, measured in bits, is polynomially
bounded in the size of the formula. In this paper, we consider a special class
of quantifier-free Presburger formulas in which most linear constraints are
difference (separation) constraints, and the non-difference constraints are
sparse. This class has been observed to commonly occur in software
verification. We derive a new solution bound in terms of parameters
characterizing the sparseness of linear constraints and the number of
non-difference constraints, in addition to traditional measures of formula
size. In particular, we show that the number of bits needed per integer
variable is linear in the number of non-difference constraints and logarithmic
in the number and size of non-zero coefficients in them, but is otherwise
independent of the total number of linear constraints in the formula. The
derived bound can be used in a decision procedure based on instantiating
integer variables over a finite domain and translating the input
quantifier-free Presburger formula to an equi-satisfiable Boolean formula,
which is then checked using a Boolean satisfiability solver. In addition to our
main theoretical result, we discuss several optimizations for deriving tighter
bounds in practice. Empirical evidence indicates that our decision procedure
can greatly outperform other decision procedures.
