Fast Deterministic Rendezvous in Labeled Lines

Two mobile agents, starting from different nodes of a network modeled as a graph, and woken up at possibly different times, have to meet at the same node. This problem is known as rendezvous. Agents move in synchronous rounds. In each round, an agent can either stay idle or move to an adjacent node. We consider deterministic rendezvous in the infinite line, i.e., the infinite graph with all nodes of degree 2. Each node has a distinct label which is a positive integer. An agent currently located at a node can see its label and both ports 0 and 1 at the node. The time of rendezvous is the number of rounds until meeting, counted from the starting round of the earlier agent. We consider three scenarios. In the first scenario, each agent knows its position in the line, i.e., each of them knows its initial distance from the smallest-labeled node, on which side of this node it is located, and the direction towards it. For this scenario, we design a rendezvous algorithm working in time O(D), where D is the initial distance between the agents. This complexity is clearly optimal. In the second scenario, each agent knows a priori only the label of its starting node and the initial distance D between them. In this scenario, we design a rendezvous algorithm working in time O(Dlog^*𝓁), where 𝓁 is the larger label of the starting nodes. We also prove a matching lower bound Ω(Dlog^*𝓁). Finally, in the most general scenario, where each agent knows a priori only the label of its starting node, we design a rendezvous algorithm working in time O(D²(log^*𝓁)³), which is thus at most cubic in the lower bound. All our results remain valid (with small changes) for arbitrary finite lines and for cycles. Our algorithms are drastically better than approaches that use graph exploration, which have running times that depend on the size or diameter of the graph. Our main methodological tool, and the main novelty of the paper, is a two way reduction: from fast colouring of the infinite labeled line using a constant number of colours in the LOCAL model to fast rendezvous in this line, and vice-versa. In one direction we use fast node colouring to quickly break symmetry between the identical agents. In the other direction, a lower bound on colouring time implies a lower bound on the time of breaking symmetry between the agents, and hence a lower bound on their meeting time.