A semantic equivalence for Bio-PEPA based on discretisation of continuous values

Bio-PEPA is a process algebra for modelling biological systems. An important aspect of Bio-PEPA is the ability it provides to discretise concentrations resulting in a smaller, more manageable state space. The discretisation is based on a step size which determines the size of each discrete level and also the number of levels. This paper considers the relationship between two discretisations of the same Bio-PEPA model that differ only in the step size and hence the number of levels, by using the idea of equivalence from concurrency and process algebra. We present a novel behavioural semantic equivalence, compression bisimilarity, and investigate when this equates two discretisations of the same model and the circumstances in which this equivalence is a congruence with respect to the synchronisation operator. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.