English

An Optimal Decentralized $(\Delta + 1)$-Coloring Algorithm

Data Structures and Algorithms 2021-05-04 v2 Discrete Mathematics Combinatorics

Abstract

Consider the following simple coloring algorithm for a graph on nn vertices. Each vertex chooses a color from {1,,Δ(G)+1}\{1, \dotsc, \Delta(G) + 1\} uniformly at random. While there exists a conflicted vertex choose one such vertex uniformly at random and recolor it with a randomly chosen color. This algorithm was introduced by Bhartia et al. [MOBIHOC'16] for channel selection in WIFI-networks. We show that this algorithm always converges to a proper coloring in expected O(nlogΔ)O(n \log \Delta) steps, which is optimal and proves a conjecture of Chakrabarty and Supinski [SOSA'20].

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.05121,
  title  = {An Optimal Decentralized $(\Delta + 1)$-Coloring Algorithm},
  author = {Daniel Bertschinger and Johannes Lengler and Anders Martinsson and Robert Meier and Angelika Steger and Miloš Trujić and Emo Welzl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.05121},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:39:53.190Z