Abstract
We consider the fault-tolerant consensus problem in radio networks with crash-prone nodes. Specifically, we develop lower bounds and matching upper bounds for this problem in single-hop radios networks, where all nodes are located within broadcast range of each other. In a novel break from existing work, we introduce a collision-prone communication model in which each node may lose an arbitrary subset of the messages sent by its neighbors during each round. This model is motivated by behavior observed in empirical studies of these networks. To cope with this communication unreliability we augment nodes with receiver-side collision detectors and present a new classification of these detectors in terms of accuracy and completeness. This classification is motivated by practical realities and allows us to determine, roughly speaking, how much collision detection capability is enough to solve the consensus problem efficiently in this setting. We consider nine different combinations of completeness and accuracy properties in total, determining for each whether consensus is solvable, and, if it is, a lower bound on the number of rounds required. Furthermore, we distinguish anonymous and non-anonymous protocols—where “anonymous” implies that devices do not have unique identifiers—determining what effect (if any) this extra information has on the complexity of the problem. In all relevant cases, we provide matching upper bounds.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
IEEE 802.11. Wireless lan mac and physical layer specifications, June 1999
Abramson N. (1985). Development of the alohanet. IEEE Tran. Inform. Theor 31: 119–123
Aspnes, J., Fich, F., Ruppert, E.: Relationships between broadcast and shared memory in reliable anonymous distributed systems. In: 18th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, pp. 260–274 (2004)
Bender, M.A., Farach-Colton, M., He, S., Kuszmaul, B.C., Leiserson, C.E.: Adversarial contention resolution for simple channels. In: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), pp. 325–332 (2005)
Bharghavan, V., Demers, A., Shenker, S., Zhang, L.: Macaw: A media access protocol for wireless lans. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM ’94 Conference on Communications Architectures, Protocols, and Applications (1994)
Chandra T.D. and Toueg S. (1996). Unreliable failure detectors for reliable distributed systems. J. ACM 43(2): 225–267
Bogdan, S.C., Dariusz, R.K., Mariusz, A.R.: Adversarial queuing on the multiple-access channel. In: PODC ’06: Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, pp. 92–101. ACM Press, New York (2006)
Chockler, G., Demirbas, M., Gilbert, S., Lynch, N., Newport, C., Nolte, T.: Reconciling the theory and practice of (un)reliable wireless broadcast. International Workshop on Assurance in Distributed Systems and Networks (ADSN) (to appear) (2005)
Chockler, G., Demirbas, M., Gilbert, S., Newport, C.: A middleware framework for robust applications in wireless ad hoc networks. In: Proceedings of the 43rd Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (2005)
Chockler, G., Demirbas, M., Gilbert, S., Newport, C., Nolte, T: Consensus and collision detectors in wireless ad hoc networks. In: PODC ’05: Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, pp. 197–206. ACM Press, New York (2005)
Chockler, G., Demirbas, M., Gilbert, S., Newport, C., Nolte, T.: Consensus and collision detectors in wireless ad hoc networks. In: Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing. ACM Press, New York (2005)
Clementi, A.E.F., Monti, A., Silvestri, R.: Selective families, superimposed codes, and broadcasting on unknown radio networks. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 709–718. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia (2001)
Deng, J., Varshney, P.K., Haas, Z.J.: A new backoff algorithm for the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. In: Communication Networks and Distributed Systems Modeling and Simulation (CNDS ’04) (2004)
Dwork C., Lynch N. and Stockmeyer L. (1988). Consensus in the presence of partial synchrony. J. ACM 35(2): 288–323
Farach-Colton, M., Fernandes, R.J., Mosteiro, M.A.: Lower bounds for clear transmissions in radio networks. In: Proceedings of the 7th Latin American Symposium on Theoretical Informatics (LATIN), pp. 447–454 (2006)
Fischer M.J., Lynch N.A. and Paterson M.S. (1985). Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process. J. ACM 32(2): 374–382
Ganesan, D., Krishnamachari, B., Woo, A., Culler, D., Estrin, D., Wicker, S.: Complex behavior at scale: an experimental study of low-power wireless sensor networks. UCLA Computer Science Technical Report UCLA/CSD-TR (2003)
Goldberg L.A., Jerrum M., Kannan S. and Paterson M. (2004). A bound on the capacity of backoff and acknowledgment-based protocols. SIAM J. Comput. 33(2): 313–331
Goldberg L.A., Mackenzie P.D., Paterson M. and Srinivasan A. (2000). Contention resolution with constant expected delay. J. ACM 47(6): 1048–1096
Haas Z.J. and Deng J. (2002). Dual busy tone multiple access (dbtma)-a multiple access control scheme for ad hoc networks. IEEE Trans. Comm. 50(6): 975–985
Haringstad J., Leighton T. and Rogoff B. (1996). Analysis of backoff protocols for mulitiple access channels. SIAM J. Comput. 25(4): 740–774
Jurdzinski T. and Stachowiak G. (2005). Probabilistic algorithms for the wake-up problem in single-hop radio networks. Theor. Comput. Syst. 38(3): 347–367
Koo, C.-Y.: Broadcast in radio networks tolerating byzantine adversarial behavior. ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), pp. 275–282 (2004)
Kotz, D., Newport, C., Gray, R.S., Liu, J., Yuan, Y., Elliott, C.: Experimental evaluation of wireless simulation assumptions. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems, pp. 78–82 (2004)
Kowalski, D.R.: On selection problem in radio networks. In: Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, pp. 158–166, ACM Press, New York (2005)
Kumar, M.: A consensus protocol for wireless sensor networks. Master’s thesis, Wayne State University (2003)
Lamport L. (2001). Paxos made simple. ACM SIGACT News 32(4): 18–25
Lynch N. (1996). Distributed Algorithms. Morgan Kaufman, San Francisco
Metcalfe R.M. and Boggs D.R. (1976). Ethernet: distributed packet switching for local computer networks. Commun. ACM 19(7): 395–404
Moscibroda, T., Wattenhofer, R.: Maximal independent sets in radio networks. In: Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), pp. 148–157, ACM, New York (2005)
Newport C.: Consensus and Collision Detectors in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks. Master’s thesis, MIT, Cambridge (2006)
Polastre, J., Culler, D.: Versatile low power media access for wireless sensor networks. The Second ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SENSYS), pp. 95–107 (2004)
Raghavan P. and Upfal E. (1999). Stochastic contention resolution with short delays. SIAM J. Comput. 28(2): 709–719
Santoro, N., Widmayer, P.: Time is not a healer. In: Proceedings of the 6th Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, pp. 304–313. Springer, Heidelberg (1989)
Santoro, N., Widmayer, P.: Distributed function evaluation in presence of transmission faults. In: Proceedings of International Symposium on Algorithms (SIGAL), pp. 358–367 (1990)
van Dam, T., Langendoen, K.: An adaptive energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. The First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SENSYS), pp. 171–180 (2003)
Woo, A., Tong, T., Culler, D.: Taming the underlying challenges of multihop routing in sensor networks. The First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SENSYS), pp. 14–27 (2003)
Woo, A., Whitehouse, K., Jiang, F., Polastre, J., Culler, D.: Exploiting the capture effect for collision detection and recovery. In: Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Embedded Networked Sensors, pp. 45–52 (2005)
Ye, W., Heidemann, J., Estrin, D.: An energy-efficient mac protocol for wireless sensor networks. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM) (2002)
Zhao, J., Govindan, R.: Understanding packet delivery performance in dense wireless sensor networks. The First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SENSYS), pp. 1–13 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work is supported by MURI–AFOSR SA2796PO 1-0000243658, USAF–AFRL #FA9550-04-1-0121, NSF Grant CCR-0121277, NSF-Texas Engineering Experiment Station Grant XS64961-CS, and DARPA F33615-01-C-1896.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chockler, G., Demirbas, M., Gilbert, S. et al. Consensus and collision detectors in radio networks. Distrib. Comput. 21, 55–84 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-008-0056-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-008-0056-2