Extending input-output place-transition Petri nets for distributed controller systems development

Petri nets have been widely used in the design of embedded controllers, namely in electronic hardware and computing platforms design, as well as within automation application areas. This paper presents updated characteristics of one class of Petri nets, named Input-Output Place-Transition Petri nets (IOPT nets), extended to support networked embedded controllers design and globally-asynchronous locally-synchronous (GALS) systems modeling, together with its associated metamodel and execution semantics. The proposed meta-model is compliant with the Petri Net Markup Language (PNML) metamodel, augmented with the descriptions for inputs and outputs, as well as for time domains and communication channels. The meta-model is described using UML class diagrams and has an equivalent Ecore meta-model that positioning IOPT nets within the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF).