Logarithmic Expected-Time Leader Election in Population Protocol Model

TL;DR

This paper presents a leader election protocol in the population protocol model that guarantees logarithmic expected stabilization time and uses a logarithmic number of states per agent, improving efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel leader election protocol with logarithmic expected time and minimal state complexity, given rough knowledge of population size.

Findings

Leader election completed in O(log n) expected parallel time.

Protocol uses O(log n) states per agent.

Ensures a unique leader is elected and maintained forever.

Abstract

In this paper, the leader election problem in the population protocol model is considered. A leader election protocol with logarithmic stabilization time is given. Given a rough knowledge m of the population size n such that m >= \log_2 n and m=O(log n), the proposed protocol guarantees that exactly one leader is elected from n agents within O(log n) parallel time in expectation and the unique leader is kept forever thereafter. The number of states per agent of the protocol is O(log n).