Stochastic Petri nets and their applications

Although continuous-time Markov chains have been widely used to analyze the performance of communication networks, constructing and solving a continuous-time Markov chain is a tedious and error-prone procedure, especially when the systems are complex. A relief from the burden is provided by stochastic Petri nets and the corresponding software packages, which provide automated generation and solution of continuous-time Markov chains. This paper gives an overview of stochastic Petri nets. Two examples in communication networks (i.e., one for ATM networks and the other for wireless networks) are presented and studied to illustrate how to use stochastic Petri nets for performance, availability and performability analysis of communication networks.