Discrete Event Systems (HS 2009)

Over the past few decades the rapid evolution of computing, communication, and information technologies has brought about the proliferation of new dynamic systems. A significant part of activity in these systems is governed by operational rules designed by humans. The dynamics of these systems are characterized by asynchronous occurrences of discrete events, some controlled (e.g. hitting a keyboard key, sending a message), some not (e.g. spontaneous failure, packet loss).

The mathematical arsenal centered around differential equations that has been employed in systems engineering to model and study processes governed by the laws of nature is often inadequate or inappropriate for discrete event systems. The challenge is to develop new modeling frameworks, analysis techniques, design tools, testing methods, and optimization processes for this new generation of systems.

In this lecture we give an introduction to discrete event systems. We start out the course by studying popular models of discrete event systems, such as automata and Petri nets. In the second part of the course we analyze discrete event systems. We first examine discrete event systems from an average-case perspective: we model discrete events as stochastic processes, and then apply Markov chains and queuing theory for an understanding of the typical behavior of a system. In the last part of the course we analyze discrete event systems from a worst-case perspective using the theory of online algorithms and adversarial queuing.

Course language: German

Lecture by Prof. Roger Wattenhofer and Dr. Kai Lampka Thursday 13.15-15.00 @ ETF E1.

Exercises by Raphael Eidenbenz and Jasmin Smula Thursday 15.15-17.00 @ ETF E1.

Exam Review

You can take a look at your exam until the end of March. To do so, please go to our secretary Monica Fricker (office ETZ G88) during the following office hours:
Monday: 14-17
Wednesday: 9-12

Exam

The exam is scheduled for Saturday, 30. January 2010, from 9:00 to 12:00 at HG E3.
You may use any written material like scripts, your own notes, exercise sheets, books, etc...
All electronical devices (computers, calculators, cell phones, etc...) are not allowed during the exam!

In order to get a feeling of our exam style, you may have a look at this sample exam and the sample solutions.

Question Session

We will hold a question session in which we (try to) answer your questions about this lecture. The session is on Tuesday, 19. January 2010, 14:00 - 15:00 at ETZ F78.1
Please send us your questions ahead of time, at the latest until Monday, 18. January 2010 at 14:00 by email to either of the assistants.

Question Wiki

We try to keep all answered questions (not the ones we answer in the question session, though) publicly available on this Question Wiki such that everyone can profit.

Lecture Notes

The following documents are lecture notes of former students. (We provide no guarantee that these documents are correct!)
HS_05
HS_06
HS_07

Lecture material

Exercise material

'Testat'

You do not need a Testat to attend the final exam. However, if you need a Testat, e.g. because you don't intend to take the final exam, but need an attestation that you attended the class, you need to hand in at least 80% of the exercises.

References

[exorciser]	Exorciser - Interaktive Lernsoftware für theoretische Informatik Download
[bertsekas]	Data Networks Dimitri Bersekas, Robert Gallager Prentice Hall, 1991, ISBN: 0132009161
[borodin]	Online Computation and Competitive Analysis Allan Borodin, Ran El-Yaniv. Cambridge University Press, 1998
[boudec]	Network Calculus J.-Y. Le Boudec, P. Thiran Springer, 2001
[cassandras]	Introduction to Discrete Event Systems Christos Cassandras,Stephane Lafortune. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0-7923-8609-4
[fiat]	Online Algorithms: The State of the Art A. Fiat and G. Woeginger
[hochbaum]	Approximation Algorithms for NP-hard Problems (Chapter 13 by S. Irani, A. Karlin) D. Hochbaum
[murata]	Petri Nets: Properties, Analysis and Applications Tadao Murata Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 99, issue 4, April 1989. pp. 541--580 Download
[schickinger]	Diskrete Strukturen (Band 2: Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Statistik) T. Schickinger, A. Steger Springer, Berlin, 2001
[sipser]	Introduction to the Theory of Computation Michael Sipser. PWS Publishing Company, 1996, ISBN 053494728X
[baier]	Principles of Model Checking Christel Baier and Joost-Pieter Katoen MIT Press

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