Towards distributed execution of Petri net conflicts through model transformation

Petri nets are a suitable modeling formalism to specify concurrency, making them appropriate to model distributed embedded systems and embedded systems with concurrent processes. To make a distributed implementation of a system specified by a Petri net model, is required to make the partition/distribution of the model into a set of distributed and interacting sub-models. This paper presents a model transformation to allow the distributed execution of Petri net conflicts, enabling this way the distribution of processes in conflict. This transformation has some constraints and introduces some minor behavioral changes, otherwise it would not be possible to distribute Petri net conflicts (it is known that conflicts must be locally solved). This transformation was applied to a specific non-autonomous Petri net class (IOPT-nets), which together with its tool chain framework (IOPT-tools), allows the development of embedded systems. IOPT-tools (online available at http://gres.uninova.pt/) include an editor, a model-checking tool, and automatic code generators tools for software and hardware platforms.