Application Of Petri Nets To Communication Networks

Petri nets offer a mathematically defined technique for the specification, design, analysis, verification and performance evaluation of concurrent distributed systems. Communications networks, ranging from traditional telecommunication systems to advanced Internet-based information services, are inherently distributed and comprise systems with concurrently operating components. This volume presents a selection of the latest advances in the use of Petri nets for the modeling, analysis and management of communication networks and systems in the broadest sense of these terms.

This state-of-the-art survey in the Advances in Petri Nets series reports how various well-established and novel Petri net notions and techniques can be employed for modelling communication-based systems, with a particular focus on workflow management and business processes. The book builds on the success of a special program of the German Science Foundation (DFG) on Petri Net Technology as well as on broad participation from the international Petri net research community.

Driven by the request for increased productivity, flexibility, and competitiveness, modern civilization increasingly has created high-performance discrete event dynamic systems (DEDSs). These systems exhibit concurrent, sequential, competitive activities among their components. They are often complex and large in scale, and necessarily flexible and thus highly capital-intensive. Examples of systems are manufacturing systems, communication networks, traffic and logistic systems, and military command and control systems. Modeling and performance evaluation play a vital role in the design and operation of such high-performance DEDSs and thus have received widespread attention from researchers over the past two decades. One methodology resulting from this effort is based on timed Petri nets and related graphical and mathematical tools. The popularity that Petri nets have been gaining in modeling of DEDSs is due to their powerful representational ability of concurrency and synchronization; however these properties of DEDSs cannot be expressed easily in traditional formalisms developed for analysis of `classical' systems with sequential behaviors. This book introduces the theories and applications of timed Petri nets systematically. Moreover, it also presents many practical applications in addition to theoretical developments, together with the latest research results and industrial applications of timed Petri nets. Timed Petri Nets: Theory and Application is intended for use by researchers and practitioners in the area of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, ICATPN 2000, held in Aarhus, Denmark, in June 2000. The 20 revised full papers presented together with four invited surveys and four tool presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers address all current aspects of Petri net research and development including system design and verification, UML, compositionality, process algebras, model checking, computer networking, business process engineering, communication networks, etc. Various classes of Petri nets are discussed including safe Petri nets, high-level Petri nets, colored Petri nets, P/T nets, and timed Petri nets.

Using formal methods for the specification and verification of hardware and software systems is becoming increasingly important as systems increase in size and complexity. The aim of the book is to illustrate progress in formal methods based on Petri net formalisms. It presents both practical and theoretical foundations for the use of Petri nets in complex system engineering tasks. In doing so it bridges the gap between Petri nets and the systems modeling and implementation process. It contains a collection of examples arising from different fields, such as flexible manufacturing, telecommunication and workflow management systems.

High-level Petri nets are now widely used in both theoretical analysis and practical modelling of concurrent systems. The main reason for the success of this class of net models is that they make it possible to obtain much more succinct and manageable de scriptions than can be obtained by means of low-level Petri nets-while, on the other hand, they still offer a wide range of analysis methods and tools. The step from low-level nets to high-level nets can be compared to the step from assembly languages to modem programming languages with an elaborated type concept. In low-level nets there is only one kind of token and this means that the state of a place is described by an integer (and in many cases even by a boolean value). In high-level nets each token can carry complex information which, e. g. , may describe the entire state of a process or a data base. Today most practical applications of Petri nets use one of the different kinds of high-level nets. A considerable body of knowledge exists about high-level Petri nets this includes theoretical foundations, analysis methods and many applications. Unfortunately, the papers on high-level Petri nets have been scattered throughout various journals and collections. As a result, much of this knowledge is not readily available to people who may be interested in using high-level nets.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, ICATPN 2000, held in Aarhus, Denmark, in June 2000. The 20 revised full papers presented together with four invited surveys and four tool presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers address all current aspects of Petri net research and development including system design and verification, UML, compositionality, process algebras, model checking, computer networking, business process engineering, communication networks, etc. Various classes of Petri nets are discussed including safe Petri nets, high-level Petri nets, colored Petri nets, P/T nets, and timed Petri nets.