In: IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - B, Vol. 27, No. 4, pages 681-686. 1997.
Abstract: Sequential processes can hardly be modeled with colored Petri nets (CPNs). Their standard functions (such as `Succ' and `Pred') can only describe simple cases whereas modeling a complex sequence requires the definitions of a function via a cumbersome and static table. In order to overcome these limitations, first a mixed structure is introduced which is based upon CPN and FIFO queues; then an isomorphism between the set of colors and a finite field is defined to enable symbolic calculation using polynomials associated with arcs instead of linear functions mapping sets into sets. Finally, several examples illustrate their modeling capabilities including failure recovery.
Keywords: algebraically structured nets, colored Petri nets, sequential processes.