The Energy Complexity of Las Vegas Leader Election

Abstract

We consider the time (number of communication rounds) and energy (number of non-idle communication rounds per device) complexities of randomized leader election in a multiple-access channel, where the number of devices n ≥ 2 is unknown. It is well-known that for polynomial-time randomized leader election algorithms with success probability 1 - 1/poly(n), the optimal energy complexity is Θ(log log* n) if receivers can detect collisions, and it is Θ(log* n) otherwise.