Augmented reachability trees for 1-place-unbounded generalizedPetri nets

An augmented reachability tree (ART) is proposed to extend the capability of the classical reachability tree (RT) for analyzing qualitative properties, such as liveness, of a class of unbounded generalized Petri nets, called 1-place-unbounded nets, where there is at most one unbounded place for each net. The idea is based on the computation of the minimal marking of each node in the tree. An algorithm for obtaining the minimal marking is shown. Examples are given to illustrate the technique. In addition to liveness, the proposed method can verify other properties such as reversibility and feasible firing sequences. Furthermore, properties verifiable by RT are also verifiable by ART     

A modified reachability tree approach to analysis of unbounded Petri nets.

Reachability trees, especially the corresponding Karp-Miller's finite reachability trees generated for Petri nets are fundamental for systematically investigating many characteristics such as boundedness, liveness, and performance of systems modeled by Petri nets. However, too much information is lost in a FRT to render it useful for many applications. In this paper, modified reachability trees (MRT) of Petri nets are introduced that extend the capability of Karp-Miller's FRTs in solving the liveness, deadlock, and reachability problems, and in defining or determining possible firing sequences. The finiteness of MRT is proved and several examples are presented to illustrate the advantages of MRT over FRT.     

Petri网的标注可达

本文基于Petri网的可达树的概念,给出标注可达树定义,并且证明网N与其标注可达树是一一对应的,然后,我们给出了网N与相应的标注可达树的相互转换算法。     

无界Petri网的可达树的综述

Petri网自提出以来得到了学术界和工业界的广泛关注. Petri网系统的可达性是最基本性质之一.系统的其他相关性质都可以通过可达性进行分析.利用等价的有限可达树来研究无界Petri网可达性,依然是一个开放性问题.该研究可以追溯到40年前,但由于问题本身的复杂性和难度太大,直到最近20年,经过国内外诸多学者的不懈努力,才逐渐取得了一些阶段性的成果和部分突破.本文回顾了近40年来国内外学者为彻底解决该问题作出的贡献.重点对4种开创性的研究成果展开讨论,分别为有限可达树、扩展可达树、改进可达树及新型改进可达树.探讨了今后无界Petri网可达性问题的研究方向.     

Comments on “A Modified Reachability Tree Approach to Analysis of Unbounded Petri Nets”

The above paper introduced the construction of a modified reachability tree (MRT) for (unbounded) Petri nets and its application to reachability, liveness, and deadlock analysis. This note shows via a counterexample that some of the MRT properties claimed in the above paper are incorrect.     

A Petri net synthesis theory for modeling flexible manufacturingsystems

A theory that synthesizes Petri nets for modeling flexible manufacturing systems is presented. The theory adopts a bottom-up or modular-composition approach to construct net models. Each module is modeled as a resource control net (RCN), which represents a subsystem that controls a resource type in a flexible manufacturing system. Interactions among the modules are described as the common transition and transition subnets. The net obtained by merging the modules with two minimal restrictions is shown to be conservative and thus bounded. An algorithm is developed to detect two sufficient conditions for structural liveness of the net. The algorithm examines only the net's structure and the initial marking, and appears to be more efficient than state enumeration techniques such as the reachability tree method. In this paper, the sufficient conditions for liveness are shown to be related to some structural objects called siphons. To demonstrate the applicability of the theory, a flexible manufacturing system of a moderate size is modeled and analyzed using the proposed theory.     

Deadlock checking for one-place unbounded Petri nets based on modified reachability trees.

A deadlock-checking approach for one-place unbounded Petri nets is presented based on modified reachability trees (MRTs). An MRT can provide some useful information that is lost in a finite reachability tree, owing to MRT's use of the expression a + bn(i) rather than symbol omega to represent the value of the components of a marking. The information is helpful to property analysis of unbounded Petri nets. For the deadlock-checking purpose, this correspondence paper classifies full conditional nodes in MRT into two types: true and fake ones. Then, an algorithm is proposed to determine whether a full conditional node is true or not. Finally, a necessary and sufficient condition of deadlocks is presented. Examples are given to illustrate the method.     

基于Petri网的Web服务流语言(WSFL)建模与分析

描述了Web服务流语言(WSFL)的Petri网建模方法，利用网结构描述商业流程基本结构。在对WSFL的语法元素进行分析的基础上，有效地对WSFL所描述的商业流程进行了Petri网建模。在此基础上，结合Petri网的可达图分析技术，分析和验证了商业流程的可达性和活性等性质。     

Liveness-enforcing supervision of bounded ordinary Petri nets usingpartial order methods

This paper combines and refines recent results into a systematic way to verify and enforce the liveness of bounded ordinary Petri nets. The approach we propose is based on a partial-order method called network unfolding. Network unfolding maps the original Petri net to an acyclic occurrence net. A finite prefix of the occurrence net is defined to give a compact representation of the original net reachability graph while preserving the causality between net transitions. A set of transition invariants denoted as base configurations is identified in the finite prefix. These base configurations capture all of the fundamental executions of the net system, thereby providing a modular way to verify and synthesize supervisory net systems. This paper proves necessary and sufficient conditions that characterize the original net liveness and the existence of maximally permissive supervisory policies that enforce liveness     

Reachability analysis of real-time systems using time Petri nets

Time Petri nets (TPNs) are a popular Petri net model for specification and verification of real-time systems. A fundamental and most widely applied method for analyzing Petri nets is reachability analysis. The existing technique for reachability analysis of TPNs, however, is not suitable for timing property verification because one cannot derive end-to-end delay in task execution, an important issue for time-critical systems, from the reachability tree constructed using the technique. In this paper, we present a new reachability based analysis technique for TPNs for timing property analysis and verification that effectively addresses the problem. Our technique is based on a concept called clock-stamped state class (CS-class). With the reachability tree generated based on CS-classes, we can directly compute the end-to-end time delay in task execution. Moreover, a CS-class can be uniquely mapped to a traditional state class based on which the conventional reachability tree is constructed. Therefore, our CS-class-based analysis technique is more general than the existing technique. We show how to apply this technique to timing property verification of the TPN model of a command and control (C2) system.     

Complexity of some problems in Petri nets

We consider the complexity of several standard problems for various classes of Petri nets. In particular, the reachability problem, the liveness problem and the k-boundedness problems are analyzed. Some polynomial time and polynomial space complete problems for Petri nets are given. We then show that the problem of deciding whether a Petri net is persistent is reducible to reachability, partially answering a question of Keller. Reachability and boundedness are proved to be undecidable for the Time Petri net introduced by Merlin. Also presented is the concept of controllability, i.e., the capability of a set of transitions to disable a given transition. We show that the controllability problem requires exponential space, even for 1-bounded nets.     

On reachability graphs of Petri nets

Petri net is a powerful tool for system analysis and design. Several techniques have been developed for the analysis of Petri nets, such as reachability trees, matrix equations and reachability graphs. This article presents a novel approach to constructing a reachability graph, and discusses the application of the reachability graph to Petri nets analysis.     

Properties of enhanced mobile membranes via coloured Petri nets

Enhanced mobile membranes represent a rule-based formalism involving parallelism and mobility dependent on available resources. A translation of this formalism into coloured Petri nets is provided in order to analyse some important properties (reachability, boundedness, liveness, fairness) in enhanced mobile membranes.     

An Improved Approach to Test Diagnosability of Bounded Petri Nets

For bounded Petri nets, Cabasino et al. propose a diagnosability test method that is based on the analysis of a modified basis reachability graph and a basis reachability diagnoser. However, its complexity is exponential in the number of nodes of the basis reachability diagnoser. In order to reduce the complexity of their method, this paper presents a new diagnosability test approach for bounded Petri nets. We present the concept of an extended basis reachability graph and prove that our approach is of polynomial complexity in the number of nodes of extended basis reachability graphs. An example is given to illustrate the application of the presented approach.      

Concurrency bugs in multithreaded software: modeling and analysis using Petri nets

In this paper, we apply discrete-event system techniques to model and analyze the execution of concurrent software. The problem of interest is deadlock avoidance in shared-memory multithreaded programs. We employ Petri nets to systematically model multithreaded programs with lock acquisition and release operations. We define a new class of Petri nets, called Gadara nets, that arises from this modeling process. We investigate a set of important properties of Gadara nets, such as liveness, reversibility, and linear separability. We propose efficient algorithms for the verification of liveness of Gadara nets, and report experimental results on their performance. We also present modeling examples of real-world programs. The results in this paper lay the foundations for the development of effective control synthesis algorithms for Gadara nets.     

无冲突Petri网的结构活性判定研究

结构活性作为Petri网的重要结构性质,在Petri网活性判定领域具有较高的研究价值。从Petri网有向回路对结构活性的影响入手,分析与判定无冲突Petri网的结构活性,讨论库所元素及其后置变迁之间是否存在有向回路对Petri网结构活性的影响,研究该类Petri网结构活性判定方法的相关条件与结论,得到无冲突Petri网是满足结构活性的充分必要条件。分析结果表明,该判定方法可在多项式时间内判定无冲突Petri网的结构活性。     

Timed high-level nets

Petri nets have been widely used for modeling and analyzing concurrent systems. Several reasons contribute to their success: the simplicity of the model, the immediate graphical representation, the easy modeling of asynchronous aspects, the possibility of reasoning about important properties such as reachability, liveness, boundedness. However, the original model fails in representing two important features: complex functional aspects, such as conditions which rule the flow of control, and time. Due to that, two different classes of extensions of Petri nets have been proposed: high-level nets and timed Petri nets. High-level nets allow the representation of functional aspects in full details, but do not provide a means for representing time; on the other hand, timed Petri nets have been thought for time representation, but they do not provide a means for representing detailed functinal aspects. Thus, these two important aspects cannot be mastered together. In particular, it is difficult to express relationships between time and functional aspects.This paper investigates the relationships between high-level nets and timed Petri nets, thus extending a first set of results published in a previous paper, where a unifying Petri net based model for time representation has been proposed. It first recalls how time can be represented in a Petri net extension called ER nets, and assesses its generality. It then investigates the relationships of ER nets with the best known high-level nets. In particular it shows the overall equivalence of ER nets, Colored Petri nets and Predicate/Transition nets, and extends the mechanism for time representation introduced in ER nets to both Colored Petri nets and Predicate/Transition nets. It also shows that these models cannot be simplified without significantly constraining the timing aspects that can be modeled.     

论非对称选择网的活性与安全性

活性与安全性是网系统的重要行为特性.该文的贡献在于为非对称选择网导出其活性与安全性的一般性质.文章讨论了活性具有单调性的非对称选择网活性与安全性的条件,并给出一个多项式时间算法来判定一个给定的非对称选择网是否是活的、安全的与活性满足单调性.文章还讨论了非对称选择网的两个子类(强化I型与强化II型),并给出活性满足单调性时其(结构)活与(结构)安全的充分条件.     

Classification trees with neural network feature extraction

The ideal use of small multilayer nets at the decision nodes of a binary classification tree to extract nonlinear features is proposed. The nets are trained and the tree is grown using a gradient-type learning algorithm in the multiclass case. The method improves on standard classification tree design methods in that it generally produces trees with lower error rates and fewer nodes. It also reduces the problems associated with training large unstructured nets and transfers the problem of selecting the size of the net to the simpler problem of finding a tree of the right size. An efficient tree pruning algorithm is proposed for this purpose. Trees constructed with the method and the CART method are compared on a waveform recognition problem and a handwritten character recognition problem. The approach demonstrates significant decrease in error rate and tree size. It also yields comparable error rates and shorter training times than a large multilayer net trained with backpropagation on the same problems.     

POC net,a subclass of Petri nets,and its application to timed Petri nets

Liveness is one of the most important properties of the Petri net analysis. This property is concerned with a capability for firing of transitions. On the other hand, place-liveness is another notion related to liveness, which is concerned with a capability for having tokens in places. Concerning these liveness and place-liveness problems, this paper suggests a new subclass of Petri net, ‘POC nets’, as a superclass of AC nets and DC nets. For this subclass, the equivalence between liveness and place-liveness is shown and a sufficient condition for liveness for this POC net is derived. Then the results are extended to liveness problem of timed Petri nets which have transitions with finite firing durations and the earliest firing rule. Although liveness of a (non-timed) Petri net is neither necessary nor sufficient condition for liveness of a timed Petri net, it is shown that liveness is preserved if the net has POC structure. Furthermore, it is pointed out that if a POC net satisfies some additional condition, Petri net liveness is equivalent to timed Petri net liveness. Finally, it is shown that liveness of timed POC nets with TC structure and the earliest firing rule is decidable with deterministic polynomial time complexity.