337 research outputs found
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 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 . 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 . 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 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
Noisy Rumor Spreading and Plurality Consensus
Error-correcting codes are efficient methods for handling \emph{noisy}
communication channels in the context of technological networks. However, such
elaborate methods differ a lot from the unsophisticated way biological entities
are supposed to communicate. Yet, it has been recently shown by Feinerman,
Haeupler, and Korman {[}PODC 2014{]} that complex coordination tasks such as
\emph{rumor spreading} and \emph{majority consensus} can plausibly be achieved
in biological systems subject to noisy communication channels, where every
message transferred through a channel remains intact with small probability
, without using coding techniques. This result is a
considerable step towards a better understanding of the way biological entities
may cooperate. It has been nevertheless be established only in the case of
2-valued \emph{opinions}: rumor spreading aims at broadcasting a single-bit
opinion to all nodes, and majority consensus aims at leading all nodes to adopt
the single-bit opinion that was initially present in the system with (relative)
majority. In this paper, we extend this previous work to -valued opinions,
for any .
Our extension requires to address a series of important issues, some
conceptual, others technical. We had to entirely revisit the notion of noise,
for handling channels carrying -\emph{valued} messages. In fact, we
precisely characterize the type of noise patterns for which plurality consensus
is solvable. Also, a key result employed in the bivalued case by Feinerman et
al. is an estimate of the probability of observing the most frequent opinion
from observing the mode of a small sample. We generalize this result to the
multivalued case by providing a new analytical proof for the bivalued case that
is amenable to be extended, by induction, and that is of independent interest.Comment: Minor revisio
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-Offs in Distributed Interactive Proofs
The study of interactive proofs in the context of distributed network computing is a novel topic, recently introduced by Kol, Oshman, and Saxena [PODC 2018]. In the spirit of sequential interactive proofs theory, we study the power of distributed interactive proofs. This is achieved via a series of results establishing trade-offs between various parameters impacting the power of interactive proofs, including the number of interactions, the certificate size, the communication complexity, and the form of randomness used. Our results also connect distributed interactive proofs with the established field of distributed verification. In general, our results contribute to providing structure to the landscape of distributed interactive proofs
Local Conflict Coloring
Locally finding a solution to symmetry-breaking tasks such as
vertex-coloring, edge-coloring, maximal matching, maximal independent set,
etc., is a long-standing challenge in distributed network computing. More
recently, it has also become a challenge in the framework of centralized local
computation. We introduce conflict coloring as a general symmetry-breaking task
that includes all the aforementioned tasks as specific instantiations ---
conflict coloring includes all locally checkable labeling tasks from
[Naor\&Stockmeyer, STOC 1993]. Conflict coloring is characterized by two
parameters and , where the former measures the amount of freedom given
to the nodes for selecting their colors, and the latter measures the number of
constraints which colors of adjacent nodes are subject to.We show that, in the
standard LOCAL model for distributed network computing, if l/d \textgreater{}
\Delta, then conflict coloring can be solved in rounds in -node graphs with maximum degree
, where ignores the polylog factors in . The
dependency in~ is optimal, as a consequence of the lower
bound by [Linial, SIAM J. Comp. 1992] for -coloring. An important
special case of our result is a significant improvement over the best known
algorithm for distributed -coloring due to [Barenboim, PODC 2015],
which required rounds. Improvements for other
variants of coloring, including -list-coloring,
-edge-coloring, -coloring, etc., also follow from our general
result on conflict coloring. Likewise, in the framework of centralized local
computation algorithms (LCAs), our general result yields an LCA which requires
a smaller number of probes than the previously best known algorithm for
vertex-coloring, and works for a wide range of coloring problems
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