Geographic Gossip: Efficient Averaging for Sensor Networks

Gossip algorithms for distributed computation are attractive due to their simplicity, distributed nature, and robustness in noisy and uncertain environments. However, using standard gossip algorithms can lead to a significant waste in energy by repeatedly recirculating redundant information. For realistic sensor network model topologies like grids and random geometric graphs, the inefficiency of gossip schemes is related to the slow mixing times of random walks on the communication graph. We propose and analyze an alternative gossiping scheme that exploits geographic information. By utilizing geographic routing combined with a simple resampling method, we demonstrate substantial gains over previously proposed gossip protocols. For regular graphs such as the ring or grid, our algorithm improves standard gossip by factors of $n$ and $\sqrt{n}$ respectively. For the more challenging case of random geometric graphs, our algorithm computes the true average to accuracy $\epsilon$ using $O(\frac{n^{1.5}}{\sqrt{\log n}} \log \epsilon^{-1})$ radio transmissions, which yields a $\sqrt{\frac{n}{\log n}}$ factor improvement over standard gossip algorithms. We illustrate these theoretical results with experimental comparisons between our algorithm and standard methods as applied to various classes of random fields.Comment: To appear, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Equational Reasonings in Wireless Network Gossip Protocols

Gossip protocols have been proposed as a robust and efficient method for disseminating information throughout large-scale networks. In this paper, we propose a compositional analysis technique to study formal probabilistic models of gossip protocols expressed in a simple probabilistic timed process calculus for wireless sensor networks. We equip the calculus with a simulation theory to compare probabilistic protocols that have similar behaviour up to a certain tolerance. The theory is used to prove a number of algebraic laws which revealed to be very effective to estimate the performances of gossip networks, with and without communication collisions, and randomised gossip networks. Our simulation theory is an asymmetric variant of the weak bisimulation metric that maintains most of the properties of the original definition. However, our asymmetric version is particularly suitable to reason on protocols in which the systems under consideration are not approximately equivalent, as in the case of gossip protocols

Talk Me Home: Visibility in Shared Narrative

Cultural inclusion requires locations in which people can ‘discursively’ gather and reside. One method of creating a lesbian-specific location is through the reiterations and repetitions of narratives. Narrative structure is an effective heuristic in what could be called a naturalisation process. Using a well-known lesbian gossip column this paper demonstrates that a sense of cultural groupmemory is produced and shared through the narrative of gossip. The degree of assumed knowledge subsequently attained is textually inscribed in the trajectory of gossip over time. In this gossip column, celebrities, through their ongoing coming-out processes, are participants in the naturalisation process, informing and normalising a historical background for lesbian community. Inclusion operates through this narrativisation to produce a cultural memory that becomes an assumed aspect of social interactions. Visibility is the predominant experiential choice of the writer in all of the individual recount segments around which the narrative structures of gossip are built. In this way, the intimate details of a celebrity’s ‘visibility’ process become the basis of the ‘unfolding intimacies’ of this social group’s ‘main characters’ (Dunbar, 1995: 5). The ‘synchronic’ moment through reiteration in gossiped-about visibility creates a diachronic collective memory to support an inclusive culture. In the instances of a lesbian gossip column this is accomplished through the established and everyday paradigms of narrative structure which produces a shared and mutually understood experiential meaning

Spread of hoax in Social Media

We discuss the way of hoax spreading as gossip and rumor throughout the social media, i.e.: Twitter, by observing an empirical case in Indonesia. We discuss the spreading factor of the gossip in the social media and see the epidemiology of the propagation hoax before and after the hoax being clarified in the conventional mass media. The discussions brought us to the open enrchiment analysis of the sociology of gossip and rumors within the online services like Twitter for future observation of human behavior.social media, gossip, rumor, hoax, Twitter.