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The model of population protocols provides a universal platform to study distributed processes driven by pairwise interactions of anonymous agents. While population protocols present an elegant and robust model for randomized distributed…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Adam Gańczorz , Leszek Gąsieniec , Tomasz Jurdziński , Jakub Kowalski , Grzegorz Stachowiak

Population protocols are a model of distributed computation intended for the study of networks of independent computing agents with dynamic communication structure. Each agent has a finite number of states, and communication opportunities…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2024-09-02 Michael Raskin

Population protocols are a popular model of distributed computing, in which randomly-interacting agents with little computational power cooperate to jointly perform computational tasks. Inspired by developments in molecular computation, and…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2017-04-18 Dan Alistarh , James Aspnes , David Eisenstat , Rati Gelashvili , Ronald L. Rivest

We study population protocols: networks of anonymous agents that interact under a scheduler that picks pairs of agents uniformly at random. The _size counting problem_ is that of calculating the exact number $n$ of agents in the population,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-05-15 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Othon Michail , Paul G. Spirakis , Michail Theofilatos

The population protocol model describes collections of distributed agents that interact in pairs to solve a common task. We consider a dynamic variant of this prominent model, where we assume that an adversary may change the population size…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2024-05-09 Dominik Kaaser , Maximilian Lohmann

Population protocols are a formal model of computation by identical, anonymous mobile agents interacting in pairs. Their computational power is rather limited: Angluin et al. have shown that they can only compute the predicates over…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-07-05 Michael Blondin , Javier Esparza , Stefan Jaax

This paper studies what can be computed by using probabilistic local interactions with agents with a very restricted power in polylogarithmic parallel time. It is known that if agents are only finite state (corresponding to the Population…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-05-30 Rabie Mikaël

Population protocols are a relatively novel computational model in which very resource-limited anonymous agents interact in pairs with the goal of computing predicates. We consider the probabilistic version of this model, which naturally…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2022-09-20 Vladyslav Melnychuk

The population protocol model was introduced by Angluin \emph{et al.} as a model of passively mobile anonymous finite-state agents. This model computes a predicate on the multiset of their inputs via interactions by pairs. The original…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-02-12 Olivier Bournez , Johanne Cohen , Mikaël Rabie

Population protocols have been introduced by Angluin et al. as a model of networks consisting of very limited mobile agents that interact in pairs but with no control over their own movement. A collection of anonymous agents, modeled by…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2011-09-22 Olivier Bournez , Jérémie Chalopin , Johanne Cohen , Xavier Koegler , Mikael Rabie

Population protocols are a model of distributed computing where $n$ agents, each a simple finite-state machine, interact in pairs to solve a common task against a (adversarial) interaction scheduler. This model was intensively studied in…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Tom-Lukas Breitkopf , Julien Dallot , Antoine El-Hayek , Stefan Schmid

We study uniform population protocols: networks of anonymous agents whose pairwise interactions are chosen at random, where each agent uses an identical transition algorithm that does not depend on the population size $n$. Many existing…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-07-30 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari

We study population protocols, a model of distributed computing appropriate for modeling well-mixed chemical reaction networks and other physical systems where agents exchange information in pairwise interactions, but have no control over…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2022-01-24 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Leszek Gąsieniec , Eric Severson , Grzegorz Stachowiak , Przemysław Uznański

Population protocols (Angluin et al., PODC, 2004) are a formal model of sensor networks consisting of identical mobile devices. Two devices can interact and thereby change their states. Computations are infinite sequences of interactions…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-08-15 Javier Esparza , Pierre Ganty , Rupak Majumdar , Chana Weil-Kennedy

Population protocols have been introduced as a model of sensor networks consisting of very limited mobile agents with no control over their own movement: A collection of anonymous agents, modeled by finite automata, interact in pairs…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2009-06-18 Olivier Bournez , Jérémie Chalopin , Johanne Cohen , Xavier Koegler

We study population protocols, a model of distributed computing appropriate for modeling well-mixed chemical reaction networks and other physical systems where agents exchange information in pairwise interactions, but have no control over…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-06-22 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Eric Severson

We study the problems of leader election and population size counting for population protocols: networks of finite-state anonymous agents that interact randomly under a uniform random scheduler. We show a protocol for leader election that…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-06-08 Othon Michail , Paul G. Spirakis , Michail Theofilatos

A population protocol can be viewed as a sequence of pairwise interactions of $n$ agents (nodes). During one interaction, two agents selected uniformly at random update their states by applying a specified deterministic transition function.…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Petra Berenbrink , Robert Elsässer , Tom Friedetzky , Dominik Kaaser , Peter Kling , Tomasz Radzik

Population protocols are a model of distributed computation intended for the study of networks of independent computing agents with dynamic communication structure. Each agent has a finite number of states, and communication opportunities…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-28 Mikhail Raskin

Population protocols are a formal model of sensor networks consisting of identical mobile devices. Two devices can interact and thereby change their states. Computations are infinite sequences of interactions in which the interacting…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-07-03 Michael Blondin , Javier Esparza , Antonín Kučera