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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

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

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

The model of population protocols refers to the growing in popularity theoretical framework suitable for studying pairwise interactions within a large collection of simple indistinguishable entities, frequently called agents. In this paper…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-03-28 Leszek Gasieniec , Grzegorz Stachowiak

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 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 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

The model of population protocols refers to a large collection of simple indistinguishable entities, frequently called {\em agents}. The agents communicate and perform computation through pairwise interactions. We study fast and space…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-05-15 Leszek Gąsieniec , Grzegorz Stachowiak , Przemysław Uznański

We consider \emph{plurality consensus} in a network of $n$ nodes. Initially, each node has one of $k$ opinions. The nodes execute a (randomized) distributed protocol to agree on the plurality opinion (the opinion initially supported by the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-02-04 Petra Berenbrink , Tom Friedetzky , Peter Kling , Frederik Mallmann-Trenn , Chris Wastell

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 population protocol corresponds to a collection of anonymous agents, modeled by…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2009-07-20 Olivier Bournez , Philippe Chassaing , Johanne Cohen , Lucas Gerin , Xavier Koegler

We study the scalability of consensus-based distributed optimization algorithms by considering two questions: How many processors should we use for a given problem, and how often should they communicate when communication is not free?…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2012-09-06 Konstantinos I. Tsianos , Sean Lawlor , Michael G. Rabbat

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 introduce a new coordination problem in distributed computing that we call the population stability problem. A system of agents each with limited memory and communication, as well as the ability to replicate and self-destruct, is…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-03-09 Shafi Goldwasser , Rafail Ostrovsky , Alessandra Scafuro , Adam Sealfon

Population protocols form a well-established model of computation of passively mobile anonymous agents with constant-size memory. It is well known that population protocols compute Presburger-definable predicates, such as absolute majority…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Michael Blondin , François Ladouceur

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 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

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

There has recently been a surge of interest in the computational and complexity properties of the population model, which assumes $n$ anonymous, computationally-bounded nodes, interacting at random, and attempting to jointly compute global…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2022-01-12 Dan Alistarh , Martin Töpfer , Przemysław Uznański

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

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