Study of network evolution based on improved physarum model

Physarum polycephalum exhibits the features of self-organization and self-optimization in the process of foraging, and can form a high transport network. Although the traditional Physarum model can emulate Physarum networks through bubbles transportation, a bubble in this model often transports within local regions and the exploration efficiency is very low because of the single bubble's transportation. In order to overcome these shortcomings, a new evolution model, named as IBTM (Improved Bubble Transportation Model) was proposed. The new model added a time label for each grid in the environment in order to drive bubbles to explore new areas, and took advantage of multiple bubbles to improve the evolving efficiency. IBTM was used to reveal the emerged process of Physarum networks. Some experiments were used to analyze the influence of the number of bubbles and food sources on the evolving efficiency of IBTM. The simulation results validate the accuracy, the self-organization characteristics and the high efficiency of IBTM.