Stochastic Petri net representation of discrete event simulations

In the context of discrete event simulation, the marking of a stochastic Petri net (SPN) corresponds to the state of the underlying stochastic process of the simulation and the firing of a transition corresponds to the occurrence of an event. A study is made of the modeling power of SPNs with timed and immediate transitions, showing that such Petri nets provide a general framework for simulation. The principle result is that for any (finite or) countable state GSMP (generalized semi-Markov process) there exists an SPN having a marking process that mimics the GSMP in the sense that the two processes (and their underlying general state-space Markov chains) have the same finite dimensional distributions.<>