On Deadlockability, Liveness and Reversibility in Subclasses of Weighted Petri Nets

International audienceLiveness, (non-)deadlockability and reversibility are behavioral properties of Petri nets that are fundamental for many real-world systems. Such properties are often required to be mono-tonic, meaning preserved upon any increase of the marking. However, their checking is intractable in general and their monotonicity is not always satisfied. To simplify the analysis of these features, structural approaches have been fruitfully exploited in particular subclasses of Petri nets, deriving the behavior from the underlying graph and the initial marking only, often in polynomial time. In this paper, we further develop these efficient structural methods to analyze deadlockability, live-ness, reversibility and their monotonicity in weighted Petri nets. We focus on the join-free subclass, which forbids synchronizations, and on the homogeneous asymmetric-choice subclass, which allows conflicts and synchronizations in a restricted fashion. For the join-free nets, we provide several structural conditions for checking liveness, (non-)deadlock-ability, reversibility and their monotonicity. Some of these methods operate in polynomial time. Furthermore , in this class, we show that liveness, non-deadlockability and reversibility, taken together or separately, are not always monotonic, even under the assumptions of structural boundedness and structural liveness. These facts delineate more sharply the frontier between monotonicity and non-monotonicity of the behavior in weighted Petri nets, present already in the join-free subclass. In addition, we use part of this new material to correct a flaw in the proof of a previous characterization of monotonic liveness and boundedness for homogeneous asymmetric-choice nets, published in 2004 and left unnoticed

Fluidization of Petri nets to improve the analysis of Discrete Event Systems

Las Redes de Petri (RdP) son un formalismo ampliamente aceptado para el modelado y análisis de Sistemas de Eventos Discretos (SED). Por ejemplo sistemas de manufactura, de logística, de tráfico, redes informáticas, servicios web, redes de comunicación, procesos bioquímicos, etc. Como otros formalismos, las redes de Petri sufren del problema de la ¿explosión de estados¿, en el cual el número de estados crece explosivamente respecto de la carga del sistema, haciendo intratables algunas técnicas de análisis basadas en la enumeración de estados. La fluidificación de las redes de Petri trata de superar este problema, pasando de las RdP discretas (en las que los disparos de las transiciones y los marcados de los lugares son cantidades enteras no negativas) a las RdP continuas (en las que los disparos de las transiciones, y por lo tanto los marcados se definen en los reales). Las RdP continuas disponen de técnicas de análisis más eficientes que las discretas. Sin embargo, como toda relajación, la fluidificación supone el detrimento de la fidelidad, dando lugar a la pérdida de propiedades cualitativas o cuantitativas de la red de Petri original. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es mejorar el proceso de fluidificación de las RdP, obteniendo un formalismo continuo (o al menos parcialmente) que evite el problema de la explosión de estados, mientras aproxime adecuadamente la RdP discreta. Además, esta tesis considera no solo el proceso de fluidificación sino también el formalismo de las RdP continuas en sí mismo, estudiando la complejidad computacional de comprobar algunas propiedades. En primer lugar, se establecen las diferencias que aparecen entre las RdP discretas y continuas, y se proponen algunas transformaciones sobre la red discreta que mejorarán la red continua resultante. En segundo lugar, se examina el proceso de fluidificación de las RdP autónomas (i.e., sin ninguna interpretación temporal), y se establecen ciertas condiciones bajo las cuales la RdP continua preserva determinadas propiedades cualitativas de la RdP discreta: limitación, ausencia de bloqueos, vivacidad, etc. En tercer lugar, se contribuye al estudio de la decidibilidad y la complejidad computacional de algunas propiedades comunes de la RdP continua autónoma. En cuarto lugar, se considera el proceso de fluidificación de las RdP temporizadas. Se proponen algunas técnicas para preservar ciertas propiedades cuantitativas de las RdP discretas estocásticas por las RdP continuas temporizadas. Por último, se propone un nuevo formalismo, en el cual el disparo de las transiciones se adapta a la carga del sistema, combinando disparos discretos y continuos, dando lugar a las Redes de Petri híbridas adaptativas. Las RdP híbridas adaptativas suponen un marco conceptual para la fluidificación parcial o total de las Redes de Petri, que engloba a las redes de Petri discretas, continuas e híbridas. En general, permite preservar propiedades de la RdP original, evitando el problema de la explosión de estados

Performance Bounds for Synchronized Queueing Networks

Las redes de Petri estocásticas constituyen un modelo unificado de las diferentes extensiones de redes de colas con sincronizaciones existentes en la literatura, válido para el diseño y análisis de prestaciones de sistemas informáticos distribuidos. En este trabajo se proponen técnicas de cálculo de cotas superiores e inferiores de las prestaciones de redes de Petri estocásticas en estado estacionario. Las cotas obtenidas son calculables en tiempo polinómico en el tamaño del modelo, por medio de la resolución de ciertos problemas de programación lineal definidos a partir de la matriz de incidencia de la red (en este sentido, las técnicas desarrolladas pueden considerarse estructurales). Las cotas calculadas dependen sólamente de los valores medios de las variables aleatorias que describen la temporización del sistema, y son independientes de los momentos de mayor orden. Esta independencia de la forma de las distribuciones de probabilidad asociadas puede considerarse como una útil generalización de otros resultados existentes para distribuciones particulares, puesto que los momentos de orden superior son, habitualmente, desconocidos en la realidad y difíciles de estimar. Finalmente, las técnicas desarrolladas se aplican al análisis de diferentes ejemplos tomados de la literatura sobre sistemas informáticos distribuidos y sistemas de fabricación. ******* Product form queueing networks have long been used for the performance evaluation of computer systems. Their success has been due to their capability of naturally expressing sharing of resources and queueing, that are typical situations of traditional computer systems, as well as to their efficient solution algorithms, of polynomial complexity on the size of the model. Unfortunately, the introduction of synchronization constraints usually destroys the product form solution, so that general concurrent and distributed systems are not easily studied with this class of models. Petri nets have been proved specially adequate to model parallel and distributed systems. Moreover, they have a well-founded theory of analysis that allows to investigate a great number of qualitative properties of the system. In the original definition, Petri nets did not include the notion of time, and tried to model only the logical behaviour of systems by describing the causal relations existing among events. This approach showed its power in the specification and analysis of concurrent systems in a way independent of the concept of time. Nevertheless the introduction of a timing specification is essential if we want to use this class of models for the performance evaluation of distributed systems. One of the main problems in the actual use of timed and stochastic Petri net models for the quantitative evaluation of large systems is the explosion of the computational complexity of the analysis algorithms. In general, exact performance results are obtained from the numerical solution of a continuous time Markov chain, whose dimension is given by the size of the state space of the model. Structural computation of exact performance measures has been possible for some subclasses of nets such as those with state machine topology. These nets, under certain assumptions on the stochastic interpretation are isomorphic to Gordon and Newell's networks, in queueing theory terminology. In the general case, efficient methods for the derivation of performance measures are still needed. Two complementary approaches to the derivation of exact measures for the analysis of distributed systems are the utilization of approximation techniques and the computation of bounds. Approximate values for the performance parameters are in general more efficiently derived than the exact ones. On the other hand, "exactness" only exists in theory! In other words, numerical algorithms must be applied in practice for the computation of exact values, therefore making errors is inevitable. Performance bounds are useful in the preliminary phases of the design of a system, in which many parameters are not known accurately. Several alternatives for those parameters should be quickly evaluated, and rejected those that are clearly bad. Exact (and even approximate) solutions would be computationally very expensive. Bounds become useful in these instances since they usually require much less computation effort. The computation of upper and lower bounds for the steady-state performance of timed and stochastic Petri nets is considered in this work. In particular, we study the throughput of transitions, defined as the average number of firings per time unit. For this measure we try to compute upper and lower bounds in polynomial time on the size of the net model, by means of proper linear programming problems defined from the incidence matrix of the net (in this sense, we develop structural techniques). These bounds depend only on the mean values and not on the higher moments of the probability distribution functions of the random variables that describe the timing of the system. The independence of the probability distributions can be viewed as a useful generalization of the performance results, since higher moments of the delays are usually unknown for real cases, and difficult to estimate and assess. From a different perspective, the obtained results can be applied to the analysis of queueing networks extended with some synchronization schemes. Monoclass queueing networks can be mapped on stochastic Petri nets. On the other hand, stochastic Petri nets can be interpreted as monoclass queueing networks augmented with synchronization primitives. Concerning the presentation of this manuscript, it should be mentioned that chapter 1 has been written with the object of giving the reader an outline of the stochastic Petri net model: its definition, terminology, basic properties, and related concepts, together with its deep relation with other classic stochastic network models. Chapter 2 is devoted to the presentation of the net subclasses considered in the rest of the work. The classification presented here is quite different from the one which is usual in the framework of Petri nets. The reason lies on the fact that our classification criterion, the computability of visit ratios for transitions, is introduced for the first time in the field of stochastic Petri nets in this work. The significance of that criterion is based on the important role that the visit ratios play in the computation of upper and lower bounds for the performance of the models. Nevertheless, classical important net subclasses are identified here in terms of the computability of their visit ratios from different parameters of the model. Chapter 3 is concerned with the computation of reachable upper and lower bounds for the most restrictive subclass of those presented in chapter 2: marked graphs. The explanation of this fact is easy to understand. The more simple is the model the more accessible will be the techniques an ideas for the development of good results. Chapter 4 provides a generalization for live and bounded free choice nets of the results presented in the previous chapter. Quality of obtained bounds is similar to that for strongly connected marked graphs: throughput lower bounds are reachable for bounded nets while upper bounds are reachable for 1-bounded nets. Chapter 5 considers the extension to other net subclasses, like mono-T-semiflow nets, FRT-nets, totally open deterministic systems of sequential processes, and persistent nets. The results are of diverse colours. For mono-T-semiflow nets and, therefore, for general FRT-nets, it is not possible (so far) to obtain reachable throughput bounds. On the other hand, for bounded ordinary persistent nets, tight throughput upper bounds are derived. Moreover, in the case of totally open deterministic systems of sequential processes the exact steady-state performance measures can be computed in polynomial time on the net size. In chapter 6 bounds for other interesting performance measures are derived from throughput bounds and from classical queueing theory laws. After that, we explore the introduction of more information from the probability distribution functions of service times in order to improve the bounds. In particular, for Coxian service delay of transitions it is possible to improve the throughput upper bounds of previous chapters which held for more general forms of distribution functions. This improvement shows to be specially fruitful for live and bounded free choice nets. Chapter 7 is devoted to case studies. Several examples taken from literature in the fields of distributed computing systems and manufacturing systems are modelled by means of stochastic Petri nets and evaluated using the techniques developed in previous chapters. Finally, some concluding remarks and considerations on possible extensions of the work are presented

Synthesis of Liveness-Enforcing Petri Net Supervisors Based on a Think-Globally-Act-Locally Approach and a Structurally Minimal Method for Flexible Manufacturing Systems

This paper proposes a deadlock prevention policy for flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) based on a think-globally-act-locally approach and a structurally minimal method. First, by using the think-globally-act-locally approach, a global idle place is temporarily added to a Petri net model with deadlocks. Then, at each iteration, an integer linear programming problem is formulated to design a minimal number of maximally permissive control places. Therefore, a supervisor with a low structural complexity is obtained since the number of control places is greatly compressed. Finally, by adding the designed supervisor, the resulting net model is optimally or near-optimally controlled. Three examples from the literature are used to illustrate the proposed method

On the decidability of problems in liveness of controlled Discrete Event Systems modeled by Petri Nets

A Discrete Event System (DES) is a discrete-state system, where the state changes at discrete-time instants due to the occurrence of events. Informally, a liveness property stipulates that a 'good thing' happens during the evolution of a system. Some examples of liveness properties include starvation freedom -- where the 'good thing' is the process making progress; termination -- in which the good thing is for an evolution to not run forever; and guaranteed service -- such as in resource allocation systems, when every request for resource is satisfied eventually. In this thesis, we consider supervisory policies for DESs that, when they exist, enforce a liveness property by appropriately disabling a subset of preventable events at certain states in the evolution of DES. One of the main contributions of this thesis is the development of a system-theoretic framework for the analysis of Liveness Enforcing Supervisory Policies (LESPs) for DESs. We model uncertainties in the forward- and feedback-path, and present necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Liveness Enforcing Supervisory Policies (LESPs) for a general model of DESs in this framework. The existence of an LESP reduces to the membership of the initial state to an appropriately defined set. The membership problem is undecidable. For characterizing decidable instances of this membership problem, we consider a modeling paradigm of DESs known as Petri Nets, which have applications in modeling concurrent systems, software design, manufacturing systems, etc. Petri Net (PN) models are inherently monotonic in the sense that if a transition (which loosely represents an event of the DES) can fire from a marking (a non-negative integer-valued vector that represents the state of the DES being modeled), then it can also fire from any larger marking. The monotonicity creates a possibility of representing an infinite-state system using what can be called a "finite basis" that can lead to decidability. However, we prove that several problems of our interest are still undecidable for arbitrary PN models. That is, informally, a general PN model is still too powerful for the analysis that we are interested in. Much of the thesis is devoted to the characterization of decidable instances of the existence of LESPs for arbitrary PN models within the system-theoretic framework introduced in the thesis. The philosophical implication of the results in this thesis is the existence of what can be called a "finite basis" of an infinite state system under supervision, on which the membership tests can be performed in finite time; hence resulting in the decidability of problems and finite-time termination of algorithms. The thesis discusses various scenarios where such a finite basis exists and how to find them

An Efficient Siphon-Based Deadlock Prevention Policy for a Class of Generalized Petri Nets

We propose a new deadlock prevention policy for an important class of resource allocation systems (RASs) that appear in the modeling of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). The model of this class in terms of generalized Petri nets is, namely, S 4 PR. On the basis of recent structural analysis results related to the elementary siphons in generalized Petri nets on one hand and an efficient deadlock avoidance policy proposed for the class of conjunctive/disjunctive (C/D) RASs on the other hand, we show how one can generate monitors to be added to a net system such that all its strict minimal siphons are max -controlled and no insufficiently marked siphon is generated. Thereby, a new, simple, and more permissive liveness-enforcing supervisor synthesis method for S 4 PR is established

Control of Safe Ordinary Petri Nets Using Unfolding

International audienceIn this paper we deal with the problem of controlling a safe place/transition net so as to avoid a set of forbidden markings "F" . We say that a given set of markings has property REACH if it is closed under the reachability operator. We assume that all transitions of the net are controllable and that the set of forbidden markings "F" has the property REACH. The technique of unfolding is used to design a maximally permissive supervisor to solve this control problem. The supervisor takes the form of a set of control places to be added to the unfolding of the original net. The approach is also extended to the problem of preventing a larger set "F" of impending forbidden marking. This is a superset of the forbidden markings that also includes all those markings from which—unless the supervisor blocks the plant—a marking in "F" is inevitably reached in a finite number of steps. Finally, we consider the particular case in which the control objective is that of designing a maximally permissive supervisor for deadlock avoidance and we show that in this particular case our procedure can be efficiently implemented by means of linear algebraic techniques