Structure design of distributed systems using interpreted Petri nets

An approach is presented to internal structure design of distributed systems in the field of process control. Starting from an IPN (interpreted Petri net) specifying the external behavior of a system, the approach (based on a set of decomposition rules) allows a systematic construction of structure specification, thus making unnecessary the consistency verification usually employed in top-down design methods. It is shown that the decomposition rules presented allow systematic construction of the internal structure of distributed systems. These rules free the designer from specifying intermodule cooperation and from verifying consistency between the external behavior and the internal structure specification