Generalized Distributed Reaction Systems

In this paper, we introduce the notion of a generalized distributed reaction system with computations following the concept of the original reaction system: the resulting products in the individual components are obtained by applying rules which take into account the objects in the components of the system as reactants and inhibitors and yield results in specified components of the system. As specific variants, we investigate (i) generalized distributed reaction systems which look at all components for the presence or absence of objects, but the resulting products are only produced in the component the rule is assigned to as well as (ii) generalized distributed reaction systems which look for the presence or absence of objects only in the component the rule is assigned to, but the resulting products can be sent to specified components within the whole system. We first show how all these variants of generalized distributed reaction systems can be flattened to a reaction system having only one component. Moreover, we show how each of these two variants, which are restricted variants of the general model, can simulate even the general model. Finally, we prove that all these variants of generalized distributed reaction systems working with the standard, total parallel application of rules can be transferred into a usual reaction system working with the sequential application of rules.