The problem of computing functions of values at the nodes in a network in a fully distributed manner, where nodes do not have unique identities and make decisions based only on local information, has applications in sensor, peer-to-peer, and ad hoc networks. The task of computing separable functions, which can be written as linear combinations of functions of individual variables, is studied in this context. Known iterative algorithms for averaging can be used to compute the normalized values of such functions, but these algorithms do not extend, in general, to the computation of the actual values of separable functions. The main contribution of this paper is the design of a distributed randomized algorithm for computing separable functions. The running time of the algorithm is shown to depend on the running time of a minimum computation algorithm used as a subroutine. Using a randomized gossip mechanism for minimum computation as the subroutine yields a complete fully distributed algorithm for computing separable functions. For a class of graphs with small spectral gap, such as grid graphs, the time used by the algorithm to compute averages is of a smaller order than the time required by a known iterative averaging scheme.

We study distributed algorithms, also known as gossip algorithms, for information dissemination in an arbitrary connected network of nodes. Distributed algorithms have applications to peer-to-peer, sensor, and ad hoc networks, in which nodes operate under limited computational, communication, and energy resources. These constraints naturally give rise to "gossip" algorithms: schemes in which nodes repeatedly communicate with randomly chosen neighbors, thus distributing the computational burden across all the nodes in the network and making the computation robust against node failures. Information dissemination based on network coding was introduced by Deb and Medard. They showed the virtue of coding by analyzing a coding algorithm for a complete graph. Although their scheme generalizes to arbitrary graphs, the analysis does not. We present analysis of this algorithm for arbitrary graphs. Specifically, we find that the information dissemination time is naturally related to the spectral properties of the underlying network graph. Our results provide insight into how the graph topology affects the performance of the coding-based information dissemination algorithm

Motivated by applications to sensor, peer-to-peer, and ad-hoc networks, we study the problem of computing functions of values at the nodes in a network in a totally distributed manner. In particular, we consider separable functions, which can be written as linear combinations of functions of individual variables. Known iterative algorithms for averaging can be used to compute the normalized values of such functions, but these algorithms do not extend in general to the computation of the actual values of separable functions.The main contribution of this paper is the design of a distributed randomized algorithm for computing separable functions based on properties of exponential random variables. We bound the running time of our algorithm in terms of the running time of an information spreading algorithm used as a subroutine by the algorithm. Since we are interested in totally distributed algorithms, we consider a randomized gossip mechanism for information spreading as the subroutine. Combining these algorithms yields a complete and simple distributed algorithm for computing separable functions.The second contribution of this paper is an analysis of the information spreading time of the gossip algorithm. This analysis yields an upper bound on the information spreading time, and therefore a corresponding upper bound on the running time of the algorithm for computing separable functions, in terms of the conductance of an appropriate stochastic matrix. These bounds imply that, for a class of graphs with small spectral gap (such as grid graphs), the time used by our algorithm to compute averages is of a smaller order than the time required for the computation of averages by a known iterative gossip scheme [5].