Abstract

Given an undirected, anonymous, port-labeled graph of n memory-less nodes, m edges, and degree Δ, we consider the problem of dispersing k ≤ n robots (or tokens) positioned initially arbitrarily on one or more nodes of the graph to exactly k different nodes of the graph, one on each node. The objective is to simultaneously minimize time to achieve dispersion and memory requirement at each robot. If all k robots are positioned initially on a single node, depth first search (DFS) traversal solves this problem in O(min{m,kΔ}) time with Θ(log(k+Δ)) bits at each robot. However, if robots are positioned initially on multiple nodes, the best previously known algorithm solves this problem in O(min{m,kΔ}⋅ log 𝓁) time storing Θ(log(k+Δ)) bits at each robot, where 𝓁 ≤ k/2 is the number of multiplicity nodes in the initial configuration. In this paper, we present a novel multi-source DFS traversal algorithm solving this problem in O(min{m,kΔ}) time with Θ(log(k+Δ)) bits at each robot, improving the time bound of the best previously known algorithm by O(log 𝓁) and matching asymptotically the single-source DFS traversal bounds. This is the first algorithm for dispersion that is optimal in both time and memory in arbitrary anonymous graphs of constant degree, Δ = O(1). Furthermore, the result holds in both synchronous and asynchronous settings.

@InProceedings{kshemkalyani_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.8,
  author =	{Kshemkalyani, Ajay D. and Sharma, Gokarna},
  title =	{{Near-Optimal Dispersion on Arbitrary Anonymous Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2021)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-219-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{217},
  editor =	{Bramas, Quentin and Gramoli, Vincent and Milani, Alessia},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2022/15783},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-157837},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Distributed algorithms, Multi-agent systems, Mobile robots, Local communication, Dispersion, Exploration, Time and memory complexity}
}