Related papers: Population Protocols for Exact Plurality Consensus…
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…
Population protocols are a well established model of computation by anonymous, identical finite state agents. A protocol is well-specified if from every initial configuration, all fair executions reach a common consensus. The central…
We consider a population of $n$ agents which communicate with each other in a decentralized manner, through random pairwise interactions. One or more agents in the population may act as authoritative sources of information, and the…
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…
Population protocols model information spreading and computation in network systems where pairwise node exchanges are determined by an external random scheduler and nodes have small memory. Most of the population protocols in the literature…
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…
We investigate opinion dynamics in a fully-connected system, consisting of $n$ identical and anonymous agents, where one of the opinions (which is called correct) represents a piece of information to disseminate. In more detail, one source…
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…
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…
Population protocols are a model of computation in which an arbitrary number of indistinguishable finite-state agents interact in pairs. The goal of the agents is to decide by stable consensus whether their initial global configuration…
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…
Population protocols [Angluin et al., PODC, 2004] are a model of distributed computation in which indistinguishable, finite-state agents interact in pairs to decide if their initial configuration, i.e., the initial number of agents in each…
We investigate majority rule dynamics in a population with two classes of people, each with two opinion states $\pm 1$, and with tunable interactions between people in different classes. In an update, a randomly selected group adopts the…
The classic Fischer, Lynch, and Paterson impossibility proof demonstrates that any deterministic protocol for consensus in either a message-passing or shared-memory system must violate at least one of termination, validity, or agreement in…
In their 2006 seminal paper in Distributed Computing, Angluin et al. present a construction that, given any Presburger predicate as input, outputs a leaderless population protocol that decides the predicate. The protocol for a predicate of…
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…
Pull voting is a classic method to reach consensus among $n$ vertices with differing opinions in a distributed network: each vertex at each step takes on the opinion of a random neighbour. This method, however, suffers from two drawbacks.…
We present the first nearly-optimal bounds on the consensus time for the well-known synchronous consensus dynamics, specifically 3-Majority and 2-Choices, for an arbitrary number of opinions. In synchronous consensus dynamics, we consider…
We consider the \mnk{classical} problem of a controller activating (or sampling) sequentially from a finite number of $N \geq 2$ populations, specified by unknown distributions. Over some time horizon, at each time $n = 1, 2, \ldots$, the…
Detection of rare traits or diseases in a large population is challenging. Pool testing allows covering larger swathes of population at a reduced cost, while simplifying logistics. However, testing precision decreases as it becomes unclear…