Embedding and elimination for performance analysis in stochastic process algebra dtsdPBC

Abstract

ABSTRACT dtsdPBC extends the well-known algebra of parallel processes, Petri box calculus (PBC), by incorporating discrete time stochastic and deterministic delays. To analyze performance in this extended calculus, the underlying semi-Markov chains, and the related (complete) and reduced discrete time Markov chains of the process expressions are built. The semi-Markov chains are extracted using the embedding method, which constructs the embedded discrete time Markov chains and calculates the sojourn time distributions in the states. The reductions of the discrete time Markov chains are obtained through the elimination method, which removes the vanishing states (those with zero sojourn times) and recalculates the transition probabilities among the tangible states (those with positive sojourn times). We prove that the reduced semi-Markov chain coincides with the reduced discrete time Markov chain, by demonstrating that an additional embedding into the reduced semi-Markov chain is needed for the reduced embedded discrete time Markov chain to match the embedded reduced discrete time Markov chain, and by comparing the respective sojourn times.