Over the years, spiking neural P systems (SNPS) have grown into a popular model in membrane computing because of their diverse range of applications. In this paper, we give a comprehensive summary of applications of SNPS and its variants, especially highlighting power systems fault diagnoses with fuzzy reasoning SNPS. We also study the structure and workings of these models, their comparisons along with their advantages and disadvantages. We also study the implementation of these models in hardware. Finally, we discuss some new ideas which can further expand the scope of applications of SNPS models as well as their implementations.

Optimization Spiking Neural P System (OSNPS) is the first membrane computing model to directly derive an approximate solution of combinatorial problems with a specific reference to the 0/1 knapsack problem. OSNPS is composed of a family of parallel Spiking Neural P Systems (SNPS) that generate candidate solutions of the binary combinatorial problem and a Guider algorithm that adjusts the spiking probabilities of the neurons of the P systems. Although OSNPS is a pioneering structure in membrane computing optimization, its performance is competitive with that of modern and sophisticated metaheuristics for the knapsack problem only in low dimensional cases. In order to overcome the limitations of OSNPS, this paper proposes a novel Dynamic Guider algorithm which employs an adaptive learning and a diversity-based adaptation to control its moving operators. The resulting novel membrane computing model for optimization is here named Adaptive Optimization Spiking Neural P System (AOSNPS). Numerical result shows that the proposed approach is effective to solve the 0/1 knapsack problems and outperforms multiple various algorithms proposed in the literature to solve the same class of problems even for a large number of items (high dimensionality). Furthermore, case studies show that a AOSNPS is effective in fault sections estimation of power systems in different types of fault cases: including a single fault, multiple faults and multiple faults with incomplete and uncertain information in the IEEE 39 bus system and IEEE 118 bus system.

As an important variant of membrane computing models, fuzzy reasoning spiking neural P systems (FRSN P systems) were introduced to build a link between P systems and fault diagnosis applications. An FRSN P system offers an intuitive illustration based on a strictly mathematical expression, a good fault-tolerant capacity, a good description for the relationships between protective devices and faults, and an understandable diagnosis model-building process. However, the implementation of FRSN P systems is still at a manual process, which is a time-consuming and hard labor work, especially impossible to perform on large-scale complex power systems. This manual process seriously limits the use of FRSN P systems to diagnose faults in large-scale complex power systems and has always been a challenging and ongoing task for many years. In this work we develop an automatic implementation method for automatically fulfilling the hard task, named membrane computing fault diagnosis (MCFD) method. This is a very significant attempt in the development of FRSN P systems and even of the membrane computing applications. MCFD is realized by automating input and output, and diagnosis processes consists of network topology analysis, suspicious fault component analysis, construction of FRSN P systems for suspicious fault components, and fuzzy inference. Also, the feasibility of the FRSN P system is verified on the IEEE14, IEEE 39, and IEEE 118 node systems.

Several variants of spiking neural P systems (SNPS) have been presented in the literature to perform arithmetic operations. However, each of these variants was designed only for one specific arithmetic operation. In this paper, a complete arithmetic calculator implemented by SNPS is proposed. An application of the proposed calculator to information fusion is also proposed. The information fusion is implemented by integrating the following three elements: (1) an addition and subtraction SNPS already reported in the literature; (2) a modified multiplication and division SNPS; (3) a novel storage SNPS, i.e. a method based on SNPS is introduced to calculate basic probability assignment of an event. This is the first attempt to apply arithmetic operation SNPS to fuse multiple information. The effectiveness of the presented general arithmetic SNPS calculator is verified by means of several examples.