Self-stabilizing Population Protocols with Global Knowledge

In the population protocol model, many problems cannot be solved in a self-stabilizing manner. However, global knowledge, such as the number of nodes in a network, sometimes enables the design of a self-stabilizing protocol for such problems. For example, it is known that we can solve the self-stabilizing leader election in complete graphs if and only if every node knows the exact number of nodes. In this article, we investigate the effect of global knowledge on the possibility of self-stabilizing population protocols in arbitrary graphs. Specifically, we clarify the solvability of the leader election problem, the ranking problem, the degree recognition problem, and the neighbor recognition problem by self-stabilizing population protocols with knowledge of the number of nodes and/or the number of edges in a network

Self-stabilizing Leader Election in Population Protocols over Arbitrary Communication Graphs

This paper considers the fundamental problem of \emph{self-stabilizing leader election} ($\mathcal{SSLE}$) in the model of \emph{population protocols}. In this model, an unknown number of asynchronous, anonymous and finite state mobile agents interact in pairs over a given communication graph. $\mathcal{SSLE}$ has been shown to be impossible in the original model. This impossibility can been circumvented by a modular technique augmenting the system with an \emph{oracle} - an external module abstracting the added assumption about the system. Fischer and Jiang have proposed solutions to $\mathcal{SSLE}$, for complete communication graphs and rings, using an oracle $\Omega?$, called the \emph{eventual leader detector}. In this work, we present a solution for arbitrary graphs, using a \emph{composition} of two copies of $\Omega?$. We also prove that the difficulty comes from the requirement of self-stabilization, by giving a solution without oracle for arbitrary graphs, when an uniform initialization is allowed. Finally, we prove that there is no self-stabilizing \emph{implementation} of $\Omega?$ using $\mathcal{SSLE}$, in a sense we define precisely

Loosely-Stabilizing Leader Election with Polylogarithmic Convergence Time

A loosely-stabilizing leader election protocol with polylogarithmic convergence time in the population protocol model is presented in this paper. In the population protocol model, which is a common abstract model of mobile sensor networks, it is known to be impossible to design a self-stabilizing leader election protocol. Thus, in our prior work, we introduced the concept of loose-stabilization, which is weaker than self-stabilization but has similar advantage as self-stabilization in practice. Following this work, several loosely-stabilizing leader election protocols are presented. The loosely-stabilizing leader election guarantees that, starting from an arbitrary configuration, the system reaches a safe configuration with a single leader within a relatively short time, and keeps the unique leader for an sufficiently long time thereafter. The convergence times of all the existing loosely-stabilizing protocols, i.e., the expected time to reach a safe configuration, are polynomial in n where n is the number of nodes (while the holding times to keep the unique leader are exponential in n). In this paper, a loosely-stabilizing protocol with polylogarithmic convergence time is presented. Its holding time is not exponential, but arbitrarily large polynomial in n

Loosely-Stabilizing Leader Election on Arbitrary Graphs in Population Protocols Without Identifiers nor Random Numbers

In the population protocol model Angluin et al. proposed in 2004, there exists no self-stabilizing leader election protocol for complete graphs, arbitrary graphs, trees, lines, degree-bounded graphs and so on unless the protocol knows the exact number of nodes. To circumvent the impossibility, we introduced the concept of loose-stabilization in 2009, which relaxes the closure requirement of self-stabilization. A loosely-stabilizing protocol guarantees that starting from any initial configuration a system reaches a safe configuration, and after that, the system keeps its specification (e.g. the unique leader) not forever, but for a sufficiently long time (e.g. exponentially large time with respect to the number of nodes). Our previous works presented two loosely-stabilizing leader election protocols for arbitrary graphs; One uses agent identifiers and the other uses random numbers to elect a unique leader. In this paper, we present a loosely-stabilizing protocol that solves leader election on arbitrary graphs without agent identifiers nor random numbers. By the combination of virus-propagation and token-circulation, the proposed protocol achieves polynomial convergence time and exponential holding time without such external entities. Specifically, given upper bounds N and Delta of the number of nodes n and the maximum degree of nodes delta respectively, it reaches a safe configuration within O(m*n^3*d + m*N*Delta^2*log(N)) expected steps, and keeps the unique leader for Omega(N*e^N) expected steps where m is the number of edges and d is the diameter of the graph. To measure the time complexity of the protocol, we assume the uniformly random scheduler which is widely used in the field of the population protocols

Time-Optimal Loosely-Stabilizing Leader Election in Population Protocols

We consider the leader election problem in the population protocol model. In pragmatic settings of population protocols, self-stabilization is a highly desired feature owing to its fault resilience and the benefit of initialization freedom. However, the design of self-stabilizing leader election is possible only under a strong assumption (i.e., the knowledge of the exact size of a network) and rich computational resource (i.e., the number of states). Loose-stabilization is a promising relaxed concept of self-stabilization to address the aforementioned issue. Loose-stabilization guarantees that starting from any configuration, the network will reach a safe configuration where a single leader exists within a short time, and thereafter it will maintain the single leader for a long time, but not necessarily forever. The main contribution of this paper is giving a time-optimal loosely-stabilizing leader election protocol. The proposed protocol with design parameter ? ? 1 attains O(? log n) parallel convergence time and ?(n^?) parallel holding time (i.e., the length of the period keeping the unique leader), both in expectation. This protocol is time-optimal in the sense of both the convergence and holding times in expectation because any loosely-stabilizing leader election protocol with the same length of the holding time is known to require ?(? log n) parallel time

Minimizing Message Size in Stochastic Communication Patterns: Fast Self-Stabilizing Protocols with 3 bits

This paper considers the basic $\mathcal{PULL}$ model of communication, in which in each round, each agent extracts information from few randomly chosen agents. We seek to identify the smallest amount of information revealed in each interaction (message size) that nevertheless allows for efficient and robust computations of fundamental information dissemination tasks. We focus on the Majority Bit Dissemination problem that considers a population of $n$ agents, with a designated subset of source agents. Each source agent holds an input bit and each agent holds an output bit. The goal is to let all agents converge their output bits on the most frequent input bit of the sources (the majority bit). Note that the particular case of a single source agent corresponds to the classical problem of Broadcast. We concentrate on the severe fault-tolerant context of self-stabilization, in which a correct configuration must be reached eventually, despite all agents starting the execution with arbitrary initial states. We first design a general compiler which can essentially transform any self-stabilizing algorithm with a certain property that uses $\ell$-bits messages to one that uses only $\log \ell$-bits messages, while paying only a small penalty in the running time. By applying this compiler recursively we then obtain a self-stabilizing Clock Synchronization protocol, in which agents synchronize their clocks modulo some given integer $T$, within $\tilde O(\log n\log T)$ rounds w.h.p., and using messages that contain $3$ bits only. We then employ the new Clock Synchronization tool to obtain a self-stabilizing Majority Bit Dissemination protocol which converges in $\tilde O(\log n)$ time, w.h.p., on every initial configuration, provided that the ratio of sources supporting the minority opinion is bounded away from half. Moreover, this protocol also uses only 3 bits per interaction.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figure