English
Related papers

Related papers: Efficient size estimation and impossibility of ter…

200 papers

In this paper we study population protocols governed by the {\em random scheduler}, which uniformly at random selects pairwise interactions between $n$ agents. The main result of this paper is the first time and space optimal {\em exact…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Leszek Gąsieniec , Grzegorz Stachowiak , Przemysław Uznański

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

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

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

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

We consider the problem of self-stabilizing leader election in the population model by Angluin, Aspnes, Diamadi, Fischer, and Peralta (JDistComp '06). The population model is a well-established and powerful model for asynchronous,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-05 Henry Austin , Petra Berenbrink , Tom Friedetzky , Thorsten Götte , Lukas Hintze

In this paper, the leader election problem in the population protocol model is considered. A leader election protocol with logarithmic stabilization time is given. Given a rough knowledge m of the population size n such that m >= \log_2 n…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-07-01 Yuichi Sudo , Fukuhito Ooshita , Taisuke Izumi , Hirotsugu Kakugawa , Toshimitsu Masuzawa

A population protocol *stably elects a leader* if, for all $n$, starting from an initial configuration with $n$ agents each in an identical state, with probability 1 it reaches a configuration $\mathbf{y}$ that is correct (exactly one agent…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-08-23 David Doty , David Soloveichik

We study the problem of randomized Leader Election in synchronous distributed networks with indistinguishable nodes. We consider algorithms that work on networks of arbitrary topology in two settings, depending on whether the size of the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-01-18 Dariusz R. Kowalski , Miguel A. Mosteiro

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

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

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

We present a loosely-stabilizing phase clock for population protocols. In the population model we are given a system of $n$ identical agents which interact in a sequence of randomly chosen pairs. Our phase clock is leaderless and it…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-03 Petra Berenbrink , Felix Biermeier , Christopher Hahn , Dominik Kaaser

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

We propose a self-stabilizing leader election protocol on directed rings in the model of population protocols. Given an upper bound $N$ on the population size $n$, the proposed protocol elects a unique leader within $O(nN)$ expected steps…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-15 Daisuke Yokota , Yuichi Sudo , Toshimitsu Masuzawa

Population protocols are a distributed computation model in which a collection of anonymous, finite-state agents interact in randomly chosen pairs and update their states according to a fixed transition function. The computation is defined…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Michael Blondin , Michaël Cadilhac , Benjamin Courchesne , Lucie Guillou , Corto Mascle , Isa Vialard

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

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

Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ nodes. In the stochastic population protocol model, a collection of $n$ indistinguishable, resource-limited nodes collectively solve tasks via pairwise interactions. In each interaction, two randomly chosen…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-05-13 Dan Alistarh , Rati Gelashvili , Joel Rybicki