Structure Preserving Bisimilarity, Supporting an Operational Petri Net Semantics of CCSP

Abstract: In 1987 Ernst-R\"udiger Olderog provided an operational Petri net semantics for a subset of CCSP, the union of Milner's CCS and Hoare's CSP. It assigns to each process term in the subset a labelled, safe place/transition net. To demonstrate the correctness of the approach, Olderog established agreement (1) with the standard interleaving semantics of CCSP up to strong bisimulation equivalence, and (2) with standard denotational interpretations of CCSP operators in terms of Petri nets up to a suitable semantic equivalence that fully respects the causal structure of nets. For the latter he employed a linear-time semantic equivalence, namely having the same causal nets. This paper strengthens (2), employing a novel branching-time version of this semantics---structure preserving bisimilarity---that moreover preserves inevitability. I establish that it is a congruence for the operators of CCSP.