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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 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

The population protocol model describes a network of anonymous agents that interact asynchronously in pairs chosen at random. Each agent starts in the same initial state $s$. We introduce the *dynamic size counting* problem: approximately…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2022-02-28 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari

The model of population protocols provides a universal platform to study distributed processes driven by pairwise interactions of anonymous agents. While population protocols present an elegant and robust model for randomized distributed…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Adam Gańczorz , Leszek Gąsieniec , Tomasz Jurdziński , Jakub Kowalski , Grzegorz Stachowiak

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 distributed localization problem (DLP), $n$ anonymous robots (agents) $a_0, a_1, ..., a_{n-1}$ begin at arbitrary positions $p_0, ..., p_{n-1}$ in $S$, where $S$ is an Euclidean space. The primary goal in DLP is for agents to reach a…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-09 Leszek Gąsieniec , Łukasz Kuszner , Ehsan Latif , Ramviyas Parasuraman , Paul Spirakis , Grzegorz Stachowiak

We study population protocols, a model of distributed computing appropriate for modeling well-mixed chemical reaction networks and other physical systems where agents exchange information in pairwise interactions, but have no control over…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2022-01-24 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Leszek Gąsieniec , Eric Severson , Grzegorz Stachowiak , Przemysław Uznański

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

We consider the model of population protocols, which can be viewed as a sequence of random pairwise interactions of $n$ agents (nodes). We show population protocols for two problems: the leader election and the exact majority voting. The…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2017-05-04 Andreas Bilke , Colin Cooper , Robert Elsaesser , Tomasz Radzik

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

This paper shows that every leader election protocol requires logarithmic stabilization time both in expectation and with high probability in the population protocol model. This lower bound holds even if each agent has knowledge of the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Yuichi Sudo , Toshimitsu Masuzawa

We study population protocols, a model of distributed computing appropriate for modeling well-mixed chemical reaction networks and other physical systems where agents exchange information in pairwise interactions, but have no control over…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-06-22 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Eric Severson

We present a self-stabilizing leader election algorithm for arbitrary networks, with space-complexity $O(\max\{\log \Delta, \log \log n\})$ bits per node in $n$-node networks with maximum degree~$\Delta$. This space complexity is…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2017-02-27 Lélia Blin , Sébastien Tixeuil

We study population protocols: networks of anonymous agents that interact under a scheduler that picks pairs of agents uniformly at random. The _size counting problem_ is that of calculating the exact number $n$ of agents in the population,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-05-15 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Othon Michail , Paul G. Spirakis , Michail Theofilatos

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 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

Population protocols are a model of distributed computing, in which $n$ agents with limited local state interact randomly, and cooperate to collectively compute global predicates. An extensive series of papers, across different communities,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2017-07-17 Dan Alistarh , James Aspnes , Rati Gelashvili

We fully characterize self-stabilizing functions in population protocols for complete interaction graphs. In particular, we investigate self-stabilization in systems of $n$ finite state agents in which a malicious scheduler selects an…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2020-10-14 Shaan Mathur , Rafail Ostrovsky

We present a self-stabilizing algorithm for the (asynchronous) unison problem which achieves an efficient trade-off between time, workload, and space in a weak model. Precisely, our algorithm is defined in the atomic-state model and works…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-08-04 Stéphane Devismes , David Ilcinkas , Colette Johnen , Frédéric Mazoit

In this paper we present the self-stabilizing implementation of a class of token based algorithms. In the current work we only consider interactions between weak nodes. They are uniform, they do not have unique identifiers, are static and…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2010-06-16 Davide Canepa , Maria Gradinariu Potop-Butucaru