State variable description and controllability of a class of continuous Petri nets

The paper starts with a brief review of the basic concepts relative to variable speed continuous Petri nets (VCPNs). A new class of VCPNs, namely linear VCPNs (LVCPNs) is defined. As the name of this subclass implies, these nets can model linear systems. A state-variable representation and its associated matrix algebra are used to describe systems modeled by LVCPNs. The state-variable formulation introduced here is that of a linear continuous time-invariant system with nonnegative state (marking) and central vector. The controllability concept of linear dynamic systems is applied to continuous Petri nets