Efficient encoding schemes for symbolic analysis of Petri nets

Abstract

Petri nets are a graph-based formalism appropriate to model concurrent systems such as asynchronous circuits or network protocols. Symbolic techniques based on Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) have emerged as one of the strategies to overcome the state explosion problem in the analysis of systems modeled by Petri nets. The existing techniques for state encoding use a variable-per-place strategy that leads to encoding schemes with very low density. This drawback has been partially mitigated by using Zero-Suppressed BDDs, that provide a typical reduction of BDD sizes by a factor of two. This work presents novel encoding schemes for Petri nets. By using algebraic techniques to analyze the topology of the net, sets of placesPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version