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We present a silent, self-stabilizing ranking protocol for the population protocol model of distributed computing, where agents interact in randomly chosen pairs to solve a common task. We are given $n$ anonymous agents, and the goal is to…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Petra Berenbrink , Robert Elsässer , Thorsten Götte , Lukas Hintze , Dominik Kaaser

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

The standard population protocol model assumes that when two agents interact, each observes the entire state of the other agent. We initiate the study of $\textit{message complexity}$ for population protocols, where the state of an agent is…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-16 Talley Amir , James Aspnes , David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Eric Severson

For nearly two decades, population protocols have been extensively studied, yielding efficient solutions for central problems in distributed computing, including leader election, and majority computation, a predicate type in Presburger…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Leszek Gąsieniec , Tytus Grodzicki , Tomasz Jurdziński , Jakub Kowalski , Grzegorz Stachowiak

We consider the fundamental problem of assigning distinct labels to agents in the probabilistic model of population protocols. Our protocols operate under the assumption that the size $n$ of the population is embedded in the transition…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Leszek Gasieniec , Jesper Jansson , Christos Levcopoulos , Andrzej Lingas

In this work, we initiate the study of \emph{smoothed analysis} of population protocols. We consider a population protocol model where an adaptive adversary dictates the interactions between agents, but with probability $p$ every such…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-05-27 Gregory Schwartzman , Yuichi Sudo

In population protocols, the underlying distributed network consists of $n$ nodes (or agents), denoted by $V$, and a scheduler that continuously selects uniformly random pairs of nodes to interact. When two nodes interact, their states are…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2020-11-26 Stav Ben-Nun , Tsvi Kopelowitz , Matan Kraus , Ely Porat

This work concerns the general issue of combined optimality in terms of time and space complexity. In this context, we study the problem of (exact) counting resource-limited and passively mobile nodes in the model of population protocols,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-11-23 James Aspnes , Joffroy Beauquier , Janna Burman , Devan Sohier

We study the self-stabilizing leader election (SS-LE) problem in the population protocol model, assuming exact knowledge of the population size $n$. Burman, Chen, Chen, Doty, Nowak, Severson, and Xu [BCC+21] (PODC) showed that this problem…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Yuichi Sudo

We propose a self-stabilizing leader election (SS-LE) protocol on ring networks in the population protocol model. Given a rough knowledge $\psi = \lceil \log n \rceil + O(1)$ on the population size $n$, the proposed protocol lets the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-05-16 Daisuke Yokota , Yuichi Sudo , Fukuhito Ooshita , Toshimitsu Masuzawa

In the stochastic population protocol model, we are given a connected graph with $n$ nodes, and in every time step, a scheduler samples an edge of the graph uniformly at random and the nodes connected by this edge interact. A fundamental…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-12-22 Dan Alistarh , Joel Rybicki , Sasha Voitovych

Population protocols are networks of finite-state agents, interacting randomly, and updating their states using simple rules. Despite their extreme simplicity, these systems have been shown to cooperatively perform complex computational…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2017-04-18 Dan Alistarh , Rati Gelashvili

Population protocols are a fundamental model in distributed computing, where many nodes with bounded memory and computational power have random pairwise interactions over time. This model has been studied in a rich body of literature aiming…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-01-05 Simina Branzei , Yuval Peres

Population protocols are a distributed computing model appropriate for describing massive numbers of agents with limited computational power. A population protocol "has an initial leader" if every valid initial configuration contains a…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-11-06 Amanda Belleville , David Doty , David Soloveichik

We study the self-stabilizing leader election problem in anonymous $n$-nodes networks. Achieving self-stabilization with low space memory complexity is particularly challenging, and designing space-optimal leader election algorithms remains…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-02-20 Lelia Blin , Sylvain Gay , Isabella Ziccardi

Population protocols are a well established model of distributed computation by mobile finite-state agents with very limited storage. A classical result establishes that population protocols compute exactly predicates definable in…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-03-08 Michael Blondin , Javier Esparza , Stefan Jaax

A population protocol describes a set of state change rules for a population of $n$ indistinguishable finite-state agents (automata), undergoing random pairwise interactions. Within this very basic framework, it is possible to resolve a…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-04-19 Adrian Kosowski , Przemysław Uznański

Population protocols have been introduced by Angluin et al. as a model in which n passively mobile anonymous finite-state agents stably compute a predicate on the multiset of their inputs via interactions by pairs. The model has been…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-02-21 Olivier Bournez , Johanne Cohen , Mikaël Rabie

Population protocols are a model of computation in which indistinguishable mobile agents interact in pairs to decide a property of their initial configuration. Originally introduced by Angluin et. al. in 2004 with a constant number of…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-04-09 Philipp Czerner , Vincent Fischer , Roland Guttenberg

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