A Method Based on Depth-first Search to Compute All Minimal Siphons

Abstract—Minimal siphons play an important role in the development of deadlock control policies for discrete event system modeled by Petri net. A new algorithm based on depth-first search of problem decomposition process is proposed to compute all minimal siphons in an ordinary Petri net. The algorithm can reduce the number of problems in the problem list. The proposed algorithm can solve the problem of high requirement for computer memory in computing all minimal siphons and decrease the memory consumption because the computer memory size is closely related to the number of problems in the problem list. Some examples are used to illustrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm. Index Terms—Petri nets, Minimal siphons, Deadloc