Computation in networks of passively mobile finite-state sensors

  • Authors:

  • Dana Angluin;James Aspnes;Zoë Diamadi;Michael J. Fischer;René Peralta

  • Affiliations:

  • Yale University, New Haven, CT;Yale University, New Haven, CT;Yale University, New Haven, CT;Yale University, New Haven, CT;Yale University, New Haven, CT

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the twenty-third annual ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

We explore the computational power of networks of small resource-limited mobile agents. We define two new models of computation based on pairwise interactions of finite-state agents in populations of finite but unbounded size. With a fairness condition on interactions, we define the concept of stable computation of a function or predicate, and give protocols that stably compute functions in a class including Boolean combinations of threshold-k, parity, majority, and simple arithmetic. We prove that all stably computable predicates are in NL. With uniform random sampling of pairs to interact, we define the model of conjugating automata and show that any counter machine with O(1) counters of capacity O(n) can be simulated with high probability by a protocol in a population of size n. We prove that all predicates computable with high probability in this model are in P ∩ RL. Several open problems and promising future directions are discussed.