Structural Petri net equivalence

An equivalence relation, called structural bisimilarity, is given for labeled Place-Transition nets. In contrast to behavioral bisimilarity of nets, this equivalence only depends upon the structure of the nets considered, that is, their places and transitions and the way these are connected. It does not involve any conversion to transition systems. Algorithms are given for reducing a net to its normal form and deciding whether two given nets are bisimilar. The paper concludes by giving a behavioral characterization of structural net bisimilarity. A given net induces an ordered process space by considering markings as states, steps as transitions and bag inclusion as the partial ordering. Structural bisimilarity of nets is equivalent to orderpreserving (noninterleaving) bisimilarity of their induced process spaces.