Distributed computation of temporal twins in periodic undirected time-varying graphs

Twin nodes in a static network capture the idea of being substitutes for each other for maintaining paths of the same length anywhere in the network. In dynamic networks, we model twin nodes over a time-bounded interval, noted $(Δ,d)$-twins, as follows. A periodic undirected time-varying graph $\mathcal G=(G_t)_{t\in\mathbb N}$ of period $p$ is an infinite sequence of static graphs where $G_t=G_{t+p}$ for every $t\in\mathbb N$. For $Δ$ and $d$ two integers, two distinct nodes $u$ and $v$ in $\mathcal G$ are $(Δ,d)$-twins if, starting at some instant, the outside neighbourhoods of $u$ and $v$ has non-empty intersection and differ by at most $d$ elements for $Δ$ consecutive instants. In particular when $d=0$, $u$ and $v$ can act during the $Δ$ instants as substitutes for each other in order to maintain journeys of the same length in time-varying graph $\mathcal G$. We propose a distributed deterministic algorithm enabling each node to enumerate its $(Δ,d)$-twins in $2p$ rounds, using messages of size $O(δ_\mathcal G\log n)$, where $n$ is the total number of nodes and $δ_\mathcal G$ is the maximum degree of the graphs $G_t$'s. Moreover, using randomized techniques borrowed from distributed hash function sampling, we reduce the message size down to $O(\log n)$ w.h.p.