Link Reversal: How to Play Better to Work Less

Sensor networks, with their ad hoc deployments, node mobility, and wireless communication, pose serious challenges for developing provably correct and efficient applications. A popular algorithm design technique for such systems is link reversal, first proposed by Gafni and Bertsekas [GB81] for routing, and subsequently employed in algorithms for partition-tolerant routing [PC97], mutual exclusion [WWV01], leader election [MWV00, ISWW09, DB08], etc. Understanding the basic foundations of the complexity of link reversal and how it can be improved will have a positive impact on such ad hoc sensor network algorithms. Gafni and Bertsekas [GB81] proposed two algorithms, full reversal (FR) and partial reversal (PR), together with an implementation of each based on associating an unbounded value with each node in the graph. In this paper, we consider a generalization, called LR, of these two algorithms, which was proposed and analyzed in a previous paper [CGWW09]. The key to the generalizat...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ALGOSENSORS
• Authors: Bernadette Charron-Bost, Jennifer L. Welch, Josef Widder
• Keywords: ALGOSENSORS 2009, Initial Labelings, Node, Wireless Sensors, Work Complexity