Derandomizing distributed algorithms with small messages: Spanners and dominating set

Abstract

This paper presents improved deterministic distributed algorithms, with O(log n)-bit messages, for some basic graph problems. The common ingredient in our results is a deterministic distributed algorithm for computing a certain hitting set, which can replace the random part of a number of standard randomized distributed algorithms. This deterministic hitting set algorithm itself is derived using a simple method of conditional expectations. As one main end-result of this derandomized hitting set, we get a deterministic distributed algorithm with round complexity 2^O(sqrt{log n * log log n}) for computing a (2k-1)-spanner of size O~(n^{1+1/k}). This improves considerably on a recent algorithm of Grossman and Parter [DISC'17] which needs O(n^{1/2-1/k} * 2^k) rounds. We also get a 2^O(sqrt{log n * log log n})-round deterministic distributed algorithm for computing an O(log^2 n)-approximation of minimum dominating set; all prior algorithms for this problem were either randomized or required large messages.