Regenerative stochastic Petri nets

Abstract

The stochastic Petri net (SPN) model is well suited to formal representation of concurrency, synchronization, and communication. We define the marking process of an SPN in terms of a general state space Markov chain which describes the net at successive transition firing times. Using structural properties of the SPN and recurrence theory for generalized semi-Markov processes, we establish conditions which ensure that the marking process of an SPN is a regenerative process and that the expected time between regeneration points is finite. This leads to a theory of regenerative simulation in the SPN setting. © 1986.