Structural Methods for the Control of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems – The Case of the Resource Allocation Problem

Abstract

The study of resource allocation related aspects is a fundamental issue in the design and control of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems (DEDSs) belonging to domains ranging from multithreaded software applications to Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). The formulation of this application-driven problem in terms of Petri nets leads to a family of net models with a specific structure-based characterization. These net subclasses are derived from a specific methodology to abstract the system in order to obtain its Resource Allocation System (RAS) view, which we describe in this chapter. After that, we concentrate our efforts in the characterization of the liveness of such models. The structural causes of the non-liveness (deadlock of some processes) are also discussed. These will lay the foundations to introduce control elements which forbid all the bad states enforcing the liveness property. The methods to compute the control are based on structural techniques avoiding the construction of the reachability graph.KeywordsFlexible Manufacture SystemResource Allocation ProblemDeadlock PreventionDeadlock AvoidanceMinimal SiphonThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.