Abstract | We exploit the game-theoretic ideas presented in [12] to
study the vertex coloring problem in a distributed setting. The vertices
of the graph are seen as players in a suitably defined strategic game,
where each player has to choose some color, and the payoff of a vertex is
the total number of players that have chosen the same color as its own.
We extend here the results of [12] by showing that, if any subset of nonneighboring
vertices perform a selfish step (i.e., change their colors in order
to increase their payoffs) in parallel, then a (Nash equilibrium) proper
coloring, using a number of colors within several known upper bounds
on the chromatic number, can still be reached in polynomial time. We
also present an implementation of the distributed algorithm in wireless
networks of tiny devices and evaluate the performance in simulated and
experimental environments. The performance analysis indicates that it
is the first practically implementable distributed algorithm. |