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We consider the standard population protocol model, where (a priori) indistinguishable and anonymous agents interact in pairs according to uniformly random scheduling. The self-stabilizing leader election problem requires the protocol to…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-11-30 Janna Burman , Ho-Lin Chen , Hsueh-Ping Chen , David Doty , Thomas Nowak , Eric Severson , Chuan Xu

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

We study exact majority consensus in the population protocol model. In this model, the system is described by a graph $G = (V,E)$ with $n$ nodes, and in each time step, a scheduler samples uniformly at random a pair of adjacent nodes to…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-11-04 Joel Rybicki , Jakob Solnerzik , Olivier Stietel , Robin Vacus

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 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

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 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

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 consider the \emph{exact plurality consensus} problem for \emph{population protocols}. Here, $n$ anonymous agents start each with one of $k$ opinions. Their goal is to agree on the initially most frequent opinion (the \emph{plurality…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Gregor Bankhamer , Petra Berenbrink , Felix Biermeier , Robert Elsässer , Hamed Hosseinpour , Dominik Kaaser , Peter Kling

We consider the problem of counting the population size in the population model. In this model, we are given a distributed system of $n$ identical agents which interact in pairs with the goal to solve a common task. In each time step, the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-05-29 Petra Berenbrink , Dominik Kaaser , Tomasz Radzik

We revisit the majority problem in the population protocol communication model, as first studied by Angluin et al. (Distributed Computing 2008). We consider a more general version of this problem known as plurality consensus, which has…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Antoine El-Hayek , Robert Elsässer , Stefan Schmid

Population protocols are a class of algorithms for modeling distributed computation in networks of finite-state agents communicating through pairwise interactions. Their suitability for analyzing numerous chemical processes has motivated…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Talley Amir , James Aspnes , John Lazarsfeld

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

This paper revisits a fundamental distributed computing problem in the population protocol model. Provided $n$ agents each starting with an input color in $[k]$, the relative majority problem asks to find the predominant color. In the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Tom-Lukas Breitkopf , Julien Dallot , Antoine El-Hayek , Stefan Schmid

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

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

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 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

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