Mildreth Alcaraz-Mejia

By Raul Campos‐Rodriguez, Mildreth Alcaraz‐Mejia and Uriel Sanchez‐ Ramirez

The discrete‐event systems (DES) are systems guided by asynchronous events rather than by the passage of the time as in traditional systems. There exists a wide set of systems that could be considered within this class, such as communication protocols, computer and microcontroller operating systems, flexible manufacturing systems, communication drivers for embedded applications and logistic systems, among others. Their proper study is a requirement for a suitable implementation of embedded hardware and software, for example. The aim of this chapter is to approach the simulation of this class of systems within the MATLAB/SIMULINK framework. A suitable simulation process, allowing the injection of input signals to the system and observing its output response, is a first step in the analysis of this class of systems, which may lead to more elaborated analysis such as reachability and deadlock avoidance. The advantage of the approach and techniques proposed in this chapter is the application of the set of tools, algorithms and visualization instruments present in the MATLAB/SIMULINK to the simulation of Discrete‐Event Systems, which allows a simple integration of various DES by utilizing the matrices that define them. The concluding section of the chapter provides a link for downloading all the code for the examples developed here.

Part of the book: Applications from Engineering with MATLAB Concepts

By Mildreth Alcaraz-Mejia, Raul Campos-Rodriguez and Marco Caballero-Gutierrez

The task allocation problem is a key element in the solution of several applications from different engineering fields. With the explosion of the amount of information produced by the today Internet-connected solutions, scheduling techniques for the allocation of tasks relying on grids, clusters of computers, or in the cloud computing, is at the core of efficient solutions. The task allocation is an important problem within some branch of the computer sciences and operations research, where it is usually modeled as an optimization of a combinatorial problem with the inconvenience of a state explosion problem. This chapter proposes the modeling of the task allocation problem by the use of Colored Petri nets. The proposed methodology allows the construction of compact models for task scheduling problems. Moreover, a simulation process is possible within the constructed model, which allows the study of some performance aspects of the task allocation problem before any implementation stage.

Part of the book: Computer Simulation