An asynchronous P system with branch and bound for the minimum Steiner tree

Abstract

Membrane computing, also known as a P system, is a computational model inspired by the activity of living cells. P systems work in a polynomial number of steps, and several have been proposed for solving computationally hard problems. However, most of the proposed algorithms use an exponential number of membranes, and reduction in the number of membranes must be considered in order to make a P system a more realistic model. In the present paper, we propose an asynchronous P system using branch and bound to solve the minimum Steiner tree problem. The proposed P system solves for the minimum Steiner tree with n vertices and m edges in O(n^2) parallel steps or O(2^mn^2) sequential steps. We evaluate the number of membranes used in the proposed P system through experimental simulations. Our experimental results show the validity and efficiency of the proposed P system.