Polynomial-Time Space-Optimal Silent Self-Stabilizing Minimum-Degree Spanning Tree Construction

Motivated by applications to sensor networks, as well as to many other areas, this paper studies the construction of minimum-degree spanning trees. We consider the classical node-register state model, with a weakly fair scheduler, and we present a space-optimal \emph{silent} self-stabilizing construction of minimum-degree spanning trees in this model. Computing a spanning tree with minimum degree is NP-hard. Therefore, we actually focus on constructing a spanning tree whose degree is within one from the optimal. Our algorithm uses registers on $O(\log n)$ bits, converges in a polynomial number of rounds, and performs polynomial-time computation at each node. Specifically, the algorithm constructs and stabilizes on a special class of spanning trees, with degree at most $OPT+1$. Indeed, we prove that, unless NP $=$ coNP, there are no proof-labeling schemes involving polynomial-time computation at each node for the whole family of spanning trees with degree at most $OPT+1$. Up to our knowledge, this is the first example of the design of a compact silent self-stabilizing algorithm constructing, and stabilizing on a subset of optimal solutions to a natural problem for which there are no time-efficient proof-labeling schemes. On our way to design our algorithm, we establish a set of independent results that may have interest on their own. In particular, we describe a new space-optimal silent self-stabilizing spanning tree construction, stabilizing on \emph{any} spanning tree, in $O(n)$ rounds, and using just \emph{one} additional bit compared to the size of the labels used to certify trees. We also design a silent loop-free self-stabilizing algorithm for transforming a tree into another tree. Last but not least, we provide a silent self-stabilizing algorithm for computing and certifying the labels of a NCA-labeling scheme

Self-stabilizing algorithms for Connected Vertex Cover and Clique decomposition problems

In many wireless networks, there is no fixed physical backbone nor centralized network management. The nodes of such a network have to self-organize in order to maintain a virtual backbone used to route messages. Moreover, any node of the network can be a priori at the origin of a malicious attack. Thus, in one hand the backbone must be fault-tolerant and in other hand it can be useful to monitor all network communications to identify an attack as soon as possible. We are interested in the minimum \emph{Connected Vertex Cover} problem, a generalization of the classical minimum Vertex Cover problem, which allows to obtain a connected backbone. Recently, Delbot et al.~\cite{DelbotLP13} proposed a new centralized algorithm with a constant approximation ratio of $2$ for this problem. In this paper, we propose a distributed and self-stabilizing version of their algorithm with the same approximation guarantee. To the best knowledge of the authors, it is the first distributed and fault-tolerant algorithm for this problem. The approach followed to solve the considered problem is based on the construction of a connected minimal clique partition. Therefore, we also design the first distributed self-stabilizing algorithm for this problem, which is of independent interest

Making local algorithms efficiently self-stabilizing in arbitrary asynchronous environments

This paper deals with the trade-off between time, workload, and versatility in self-stabilization, a general and lightweight fault-tolerant concept in distributed computing.In this context, we propose a transformer that provides an asynchronous silent self-stabilizing version Trans(AlgI) of any terminating synchronous algorithm AlgI. The transformed algorithm Trans(AlgI) works under the distributed unfair daemon and is efficient both in moves and rounds.Our transformer allows to easily obtain fully-polynomial silent self-stabilizing solutions that are also asymptotically optimal in rounds.We illustrate the efficiency and versatility of our transformer with several efficient (i.e., fully-polynomial) silent self-stabilizing instances solving major distributed computing problems, namely vertex coloring, Breadth-First Search (BFS) spanning tree construction, k-clustering, and leader election

Self-Stabilizing Disconnected Components Detection and Rooted Shortest-Path Tree Maintenance in Polynomial Steps

We deal with the problem of maintaining a shortest-path tree rooted at some process r in a network that may be disconnected after topological changes. The goal is then to maintain a shortest-path tree rooted at r in its connected component, V_r, and make all processes of other components detecting that r is not part of their connected component. We propose, in the composite atomicity model, a silent self-stabilizing algorithm for this problem working in semi-anonymous networks under the distributed unfair daemon (the most general daemon) without requiring any a priori knowledge about global parameters of the network. This is the first algorithm for this problem that is proven to achieve a polynomial stabilization time in steps. Namely, we exhibit a bound in O(W_{max} * n_{maxCC}^3 * n), where W_{max} is the maximum weight of an edge, n_{maxCC} is the maximum number of non-root processes in a connected component, and n is the number of processes. The stabilization time in rounds is at most 3n_{maxCC} + D, where D is the hop-diameter of V_r

Disconnected components detection and rooted shortest-path tree maintenance in networks

International audienceMany articles deal with the problem of maintaining a rooted shortest-path tree. However, after some edge deletions, some nodes can be disconnected from the connected component $V_r$ of some distinguished node $r$. In this case, an additional objective is to ensure the detection of the disconnection by the nodes that no longer belong to $V_r$. We present a detailed analysis of a silent self-stabilizing algorithm. We prove that it solves this more demanding task in anonymous weighted networks with the following additional strong properties: it runs without any knowledge on the network and under the \emph{unfair} daemon, that is without any assumption on the asynchronous model. Moreover, it terminates in less than $2n+D$ rounds for a network of $n$ nodes and hop-diameter $D$

Survey of Distributed Decision

We survey the recent distributed computing literature on checking whether a given distributed system configuration satisfies a given boolean predicate, i.e., whether the configuration is legal or illegal w.r.t. that predicate. We consider classical distributed computing environments, including mostly synchronous fault-free network computing (LOCAL and CONGEST models), but also asynchronous crash-prone shared-memory computing (WAIT-FREE model), and mobile computing (FSYNC model)

Trade-off between Time, Space, and Workload: the case of the Self-stabilizing Unison

We present a self-stabilizing algorithm for the (asynchronous) unison problem which achieves an efficient trade-off between time, workload, and space in a weak model. Precisely, our algorithm is defined in the atomic-state model and works in anonymous networks in which even local ports are unlabeled. It makes no assumption on the daemon and thus stabilizes under the weakest one: the distributed unfair daemon. In a $n$-node network of diameter $D$ and assuming a period $B \geq 2D+2$, our algorithm only requires $O(\log B)$ bits per node to achieve full polynomiality as it stabilizes in at most $2D-2$ rounds and $O(\min(n^2B, n^3))$ moves. In particular and to the best of our knowledge, it is the first self-stabilizing unison for arbitrary anonymous networks achieving an asymptotically optimal stabilization time in rounds using a bounded memory at each node. Finally, we show that our solution allows to efficiently simulate synchronous self-stabilizing algorithms in an asynchronous environment. This provides a new state-of-the-art algorithm solving both the leader election and the spanning tree construction problem in any identified connected network which, to the best of our knowledge, beat all existing solutions of the literature.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2307.0663