An object oriented Petri net language for embedded system design

In this paper a modelling language is described for the automated design of embedded systems. Constraints such as price, performance etc. often imply that embedded systems are implemented as communicating heterogeneous components. Today these components can no longer be classed as software or hardware but as more or less programmable with specialised languages being used to define their functionality and structure. The proposed modelling language consists of a class of high level time Petri nets, augmented with object-oriented mechanisms. It is formal, ensuring unambiguous specification, supports a high level of analysis and is general enough to support other more specialised formalisms. This language constitutes a major part of the CodeSign design methodology developed at the ETH for embedded system design.