Conflict management in PDEVS: an experience in modelling and simulation of time petri nets

PDEVS (Parallel DEVS) is a well-known formalism for the specification of complex concurrent systems organized as an interconnection of atomic and coupled interacting components. The abstract simulator of a PDEVS model is normally founded on the assumption of maximal parallelism: multiple components are allowed to undertake at the same time an independent state transition. This paper argues that the hypothesis of maximal parallelism does not allow PDEVS to adequately model and simulate systems where simultaneous state transitions are conflicting to one another. As an example, an original PDEVS model of Merlin and Farber Time Petri Nets is proposed. The realization owes to ActorDEVS, a lean and efficient PDEVS M&S framework in Java, which enables the simulation control structure to be customized. The accomplished experience suggests that some points in the formal definition of PDEVS should possibly be adapted in order to widen the applicability of the language.