Structural Characterization of Controllability in Timed Continuous Petri Nets using Invariant Subspaces

This work deals with the controllability analysis in Timed Continuous Petri Nets (TCPNs) under infinite server semantics, a fluid relaxation that can model highly populated Discrete Event Systems. Here, the full rank-controllability property is defined, ensuring that the TCPN is controllable over the equilibrium markings in each of the regions of its reachability space. This allows forcing the TCPN systems to work at interesting operation points such as maximum production states, safety regions, to mention a few. Herein two structural conditions for full rank-controllability, one necessary and the other sufficient, are introduced, avoiding the enumeration of all the configurations required in other approaches. Finally, based on this, a polynomial algorithm to test the full rank-controllability is provided. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.