2015/05/04 by Jérémie Chalopin, Chalopin, Jérémie, Emmanuel Godard +3
Computer Science · #Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS) #Distributed #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting #Mobile Agent-Based Network Management #Optimization and Search Problems #Parallel #and Cluster Computing (cs.DC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1505.00599
openalex publication_date 2015/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the exploration of networks by a mobile agent. It is long known that, without global information about the graph, it is not possible to make the agent halts after the exploration except if the graph is a tree. We therefore endow the agent with binoculars, a sensing device that can show the local structure of the environment at a constant distance of the agent current location. We show that, with binoculars, it is possible to explore and halt in a large class of non-tree networks. We give a complete characterization of the class of networks that can be explored using binoculars using standard notions of discrete topology. Our characterization is constructive, we present an Exploration algorithm that is universal; this algorithm explores any network explorable with binoculars, and never halts in non-explorable networks.