Verification of Population Protocols with Unordered Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: van Bergerem, Steffen, Guttenberg, Roland, Kiefer, Sandra, Mascle, Corto, Waldburger, Nicolas, Weil-Kennedy, Chana
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866917655675404288
author van Bergerem, Steffen
Guttenberg, Roland
Kiefer, Sandra
Mascle, Corto
Waldburger, Nicolas
Weil-Kennedy, Chana
author_facet van Bergerem, Steffen
Guttenberg, Roland
Kiefer, Sandra
Mascle, Corto
Waldburger, Nicolas
Weil-Kennedy, Chana
contents Population protocols are a well-studied model of distributed computation in which a group of anonymous finite-state agents communicates via pairwise interactions. Together they decide whether their initial configuration, that is, the initial distribution of agents in the states, satisfies a property. As an extension in order to express properties of multisets over an infinite data domain, Blondin and Ladouceur (ICALP'23) introduced population protocols with unordered data (PPUD). In PPUD, each agent carries a fixed data value, and the interactions between agents depend on whether their data are equal or not. Blondin and Ladouceur also identified the interesting subclass of immediate observation PPUD (IOPPUD), where in every transition one of the two agents remains passive and does not move, and they characterised its expressive power. We study the decidability and complexity of formally verifying these protocols. The main verification problem for population protocols is well-specification, that is, checking whether the given PPUD computes some function. We show that well-specification is undecidable in general. By contrast, for IOPPUD, we exhibit a large yet natural class of problems, which includes well-specification among other classic problems, and establish that these problems are in EXPSPACE. We also provide a lower complexity bound, namely coNEXPTIME-hardness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_00921
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Verification of Population Protocols with Unordered Data
van Bergerem, Steffen
Guttenberg, Roland
Kiefer, Sandra
Mascle, Corto
Waldburger, Nicolas
Weil-Kennedy, Chana
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Logic in Computer Science
Multiagent Systems
Population protocols are a well-studied model of distributed computation in which a group of anonymous finite-state agents communicates via pairwise interactions. Together they decide whether their initial configuration, that is, the initial distribution of agents in the states, satisfies a property. As an extension in order to express properties of multisets over an infinite data domain, Blondin and Ladouceur (ICALP'23) introduced population protocols with unordered data (PPUD). In PPUD, each agent carries a fixed data value, and the interactions between agents depend on whether their data are equal or not. Blondin and Ladouceur also identified the interesting subclass of immediate observation PPUD (IOPPUD), where in every transition one of the two agents remains passive and does not move, and they characterised its expressive power. We study the decidability and complexity of formally verifying these protocols. The main verification problem for population protocols is well-specification, that is, checking whether the given PPUD computes some function. We show that well-specification is undecidable in general. By contrast, for IOPPUD, we exhibit a large yet natural class of problems, which includes well-specification among other classic problems, and establish that these problems are in EXPSPACE. We also provide a lower complexity bound, namely coNEXPTIME-hardness.
title Verification of Population Protocols with Unordered Data
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Logic in Computer Science
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00921