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Collecting Information by Power-Aware Mobile Agents

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Distributed Computing (DISC 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7611))

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Abstract

A set of identical, mobile agents is deployed in a weighted network. Each agent possesses a battery - a power source allowing the agent to move along network edges. Agents use their batteries proportionally to the distance traveled. At the beginning, each agent has its initial information. Agents exchange the actually possessed information when they meet. The agents collaborate in order to perform an efficient convergecast , where the initial information of all agents must be eventually transmitted to some agent.

The objective of this paper is to investigate what is the minimal value of power, initially available to all agents, so that convergecast may be achieved. We study the question in the centralized and the distributed settings. In the distributed setting every agent has to perform an algorithm being unaware of the network. We give a linear-time centralized algorithm solving the problem for line networks. We give a 2-competitive distributed algorithm achieving convergecast for tree networks. The competitive ratio of 2 is proved to be the best possible for this problem, even if we only consider line networks. We show that already for the case of tree networks the centralized problem is strongly NP-complete. We give a 2-approximation centralized algorithm for general graphs.

Partially supported by NSERC discovery grant and by the Research Chair in Distributed Computing at the Université du Québec en Outaouais.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université du Québec en Outaouais, C.P. 1250, succ. Hull, Gatineau, QC, J8X 3X7, Canada

    Julian Anaya, Jurek Czyzowicz & Andrzej Pelc

  2. LIF, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University, 13453, Marseille, France

    Jérémie Chalopin, Arnaud Labourel & Yann Vaxès

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  1. Julian Anaya
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  2. Jérémie Chalopin
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  3. Jurek Czyzowicz
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  4. Arnaud Labourel
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  5. Andrzej Pelc
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  6. Yann Vaxès
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Corporation, Building SVC6, 1065 La Avenida, 94043, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Marcos K. Aguilera

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Anaya, J., Chalopin, J., Czyzowicz, J., Labourel, A., Pelc, A., Vaxès, Y. (2012). Collecting Information by Power-Aware Mobile Agents. In: Aguilera, M.K. (eds) Distributed Computing. DISC 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7611. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33651-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33651-5_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33650-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33651-5

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