Tight Lower Bounds for Greedy Routing in Higher-Dimensional Small-World Grids

We consider Kleinberg's celebrated small world graph model (Kleinberg, 2000), in which a D-dimensional grid {0,...,n-1}^D is augmented with a constant number of additional unidirectional edges leaving each node. These long range edges are determined at random according to a probability distribution (the augmenting distribution), which is the same for each node. Kleinberg suggested using the inverse D-th power distribution, in which node v is the long range contact of node u with a probability proportional to ||u-v||^(-D). He showed that such an augmenting distribution allows to route a message efficiently in the resulting random graph: The greedy algorithm, where in each intermediate node the message travels over a link that brings the message closest to the target w.r.t. the Manhattan distance, finds a path of expected length O(log^2 n) between any two nodes. In this paper we prove that greedy routing does not perform asymptotically better for any uniform and isotropic augmenting distribution, i.e., the probability that node u has a particular long range contact v is independent of the labels of u and v and only a function of ||u-v||. In order to obtain the result, we introduce a novel proof technique: We define a budget game, in which a token travels over a game board, while the player manages a "probability budget". In each round, the player bets part of her remaining probability budget on step sizes. A step size is chosen at random according to a probability distribution of the player's bet. The token then makes progress as determined by the chosen step size, while some of the player's bet is removed from her probability budget. We prove a tight lower bound for such a budget game, and then obtain a lower bound for greedy routing in the D-dimensional grid by a reduction

A Self-Organization Framework for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks as Small Worlds

Motivated by the benefits of small world networks, we propose a self-organization framework for wireless ad hoc networks. We investigate the use of directional beamforming for creating long-range short cuts between nodes. Using simulation results for randomized beamforming as a guideline, we identify crucial design issues for algorithm design. Our results show that, while significant path length reduction is achievable, this is accompanied by the problem of asymmetric paths between nodes. Subsequently, we propose a distributed algorithm for small world creation that achieves path length reduction while maintaining connectivity. We define a new centrality measure that estimates the structural importance of nodes based on traffic flow in the network, which is used to identify the optimum nodes for beamforming. We show, using simulations, that this leads to significant reduction in path length while maintaining connectivity.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technolog

Recovering the Long Range Links in Augmented Graphs

The augmented graph model, as introduced by Kleinberg (STOC 2000), is an appealing model for analyzing navigability in social networks. Informally, this model is defined by a pair (H,phi), where H is a graph in which inter-node distances are supposed to be easy to compute or at least easy to estimate. This graph is "augmented" by links, called long range links, which are selected according to the probability distribution phi. The augmented graph model enables the analysis of greedy routing in augmented graphs G in (H,phi). In greedy routing, each intermediate node handling a message for a target t selects among all its neighbors in G the one that is the closest to t in H and forwards the message to it. This paper addresses the problem of checking whether a given graph G is an augmented graph. It answers part of the questions raised by Kleinberg in his Problem 9 (Int. Congress of Math. 2006). More precisely, given G in (H,phi), we aim at extracting the base graph H and the long range links R out of G. We prove that if H has a high clustering coefficient and bounded doubling dimension, then a simple algorithm enables to partition the edges of G into two sets H' and R' such that E(H) is included in H' and the edges in H'\E(H) are of small stretch, i.e., the map H is not perturbed too greatly by undetected long range links remaining in H'. The perturbation is actually so small that we can prove that the expected performances of greedy routing in G using the distances in H' are close to the expected performances of greedy routing in (H,phi). Although this latter result may appear intuitively straightforward, since H' is included in E(H), it is not, as we also show that routing with a map more precise than H may actually damage greedy routing significantly. Finally, we show that in absence of a hypothesis regarding the high clustering coefficient, any structural attempt to extract the long range links will miss the detection of at least $\Omega(n^{5\epsilon}/\log n)$ long range links of stretch at least $\Omega(n^{1/5-\epsilon})$ for any $0<\epsilon<1/5$, and thus the map H cannot be recovered with good accuracy. To sum up, we solve Kleinberg's Problem 9 in the sense that we show that reconstructing augmented graphs is achievable if and only if the base graph has a high clustering coefficient

Kleinberg's Grid Reloaded

International audienceOne of the key features of small-worlds is the ability to route messages with few hops only using local knowledge of the topology. In 2000, Kleinberg proposed a model based on an augmented grid that asymptotically exhibits such property. In this paper, we propose to revisit the original model from a simulation-based perspective. Our approach is fueled by a new algorithm that uses dynamic rejection sampling to draw augmenting links. The speed gain offered by the algorithm enables a detailed numerical evaluation. We show for example that in practice, the augmented scheme proposed by Kleinberg is more robust than predicted by the asymptotic behavior, even for very large finite grids. We also propose tighter bounds on the performance of Kleinberg's routing algorithm. At last, we show that fed with realistic parameters, the model gives results in line with real-life experiments