Petri net partitioning using net splitting operation

The goal of the work presented in this paper is to contribute for the usage of Petri nets as the system-level specification language within the framework of hardware-software co-design of embedded systems, supporting system model partitioning into components. The paper presents the set of rules of the Petri net splitting operation based on the definition of a valid cutting set and able to divide a Petri net model into several sub-models which communicate through synchronous channels. The generated sub-models are associated with components to be executed concurrently and mapped into hardware or software components at the implementation level. The decomposition of the model is achieved using a set of three rules. Usage of this operation is presented using an automation system example, allowing splitting of the system model in order to obtain specifications for a set of distributed controllers.