The bigraph theory, devised by Robin Milner, is a recent mathematical framework for concurrent processes. Its generality is able to subsume many existing process calculi, for example, CCS, CSP, and Petri nets. Further, it provides a uniform proof of bisimilarity, which is a congruence. We present the first canonical string encoding for pure and lean bigraphs by lifting the breadth-first canonical form of rooted unordered trees to a unique representation for bigraphs up to isomorphism (i.e., lean-support equivalence). The encoding’s applicability is limited to atomic alphabets. The time complexity is $$O(n^{2}k\, d \log {d})$$
O
(
n
2
k
d
log
d
)
, where n is the number of places, d the degree of the place graph and k the maximum arity of a bigraph’s signature. We provide proof of the correctness of our method and also conduct experimental measurements to assess the complexity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.