Reachability analysis of time basic Petri Nets: a time coverage approach

We introduce a technique for reach ability analysis of Time-Basic (TB) Petri nets, a powerful formalism for real time systems where time constraints are expressed as intervals, representing possible transition firing times, whose bounds are functions of marking's time description. The technique consists of building a symbolic reach ability graph relying on a sort of time coverage, and overcomes the limitations of the only available analyzer for TB nets, based in turn on a time-bounded inspection of a (possibly infinite) tree-tree. The graph construction algorithm has been automated by a tool-set, briefly described in the paper together with its main functionality and analysis capability. A running example is used throughout the paper to sketch the symbolic graph construction. A use case describing a small real system - that the running example is an excerpt from - has been employed to benchmark the technique and the tool-set. The main outcome of this test are also presented in the paper. Ongoing work, in the perspective of integrating with a model-checking engine, is shortly discussed.