Universal protocols for information dissemination using emergent signals

We consider a population of n agents which communicate with each other in a decentralized manner, through random pairwise interactions. One or more agents in the population may act as authoritative sources of information, and the objective of the remaining agents is to obtain information from or about these source agents. We study two basic tasks: broadcasting , in which the agents are to learn the bit-state of an authoritative source which is present in the population, and source detection , in which the agents are required to decide if at least one source agent is present in the population or not.

Authors

• Bartlomiej Dudek 0001
• Adrian Kosowski

Keywords

• population protocols
• broadcasting
• oscillatory dynamics
• epidemic processes
• self-stabilization