The Complexity of Leader Election: A Chasm at Diameter Two

Abstract: This paper focuses on studying the message complexity of implicit leader election in synchronous distributed networks of diameter two. Kutten et al.\ [JACM 2015] showed a fundamental lower bound of $\Omega(m)$ ($m$ is the number of edges in the network) on the message complexity of (implicit) leader election that applied also to Monte Carlo randomized algorithms with constant success probability; this lower bound applies for graphs that have diameter at least three. On the other hand, for complete graphs (i.e., graphs with diameter one), Kutten et al.\ [TCS 2015] established a tight bound of $\tilde{\Theta}(\sqrt{n})$ on the message complexity of randomized leader election ($n$ is the number of nodes in the network). For graphs of diameter two, the complexity was not known. In this paper, we settle this complexity by showing a tight bound of $\tilde{\Theta}(n)$ on the message complexity of leader election in diameter-two networks. Together with the two previous results of Kutten et al., our results fully characterize the message complexity of leader election vis-`a-vis the graph diameter.