Two absolute bounds for distributed bit complexity

The concept of distributed communication bit complexity was introduced by Dinitz, Rajsbaum, and Moran. They studied the bit complexity of Consensus and Leader Election, arriving at more or less exact bounds. This paper answers two questions on Leader Election, which remained there open. The first is to close the gap between the known upper and lower bounds, for electing a leader by two linked processors. The second is whether the suggested algorithm, sending 1.5n bits while electing a leader in a chain of even length n, is optimal, in the case when n is known to the processors. For both problems, absolutely exact bounds are found. Moreover, the presented lower bound proofs show that there is no optimal algorithm other than the suggested ones. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.