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Fourier Analysis of Iterative Algorithms
Full text linkWe study a general class of nonlinear iterative algorithms which includes power iteration, belief propagation and approximate message passing, and many forms of gradient descent. When the input is a random matrix with i.i.d. entries, we use Boolean Fourier analysis to analyze these algorithms as low-degree polynomials in the entries of the input matrix. Each symmetrized Fourier character represents all monomials with a certain shape as specified by a small graph, which we call a Fourier diagram.
We prove fundamental asymptotic properties of the Fourier diagrams: over the randomness of the input, all diagrams with cycles are negligible; the tree-shaped diagrams form a basis of asymptotically independent Gaussian vectors; and, when restricted to the trees, iterative algorithms exactly follow an idealized Gaussian dynamic. We use this to prove a state evolution formula, giving a "complete" asymptotic description of the algorithm’s trajectory.
The restriction to tree-shaped monomials mirrors the assumption of the cavity method, a 40-year-old non-rigorous technique in statistical physics which has served as one of the most important techniques in the field. We demonstrate how to implement cavity method derivations by 1) restricting the iteration to its tree approximation, and 2) observing that heuristic cavity method-type arguments hold rigorously on the simplified iteration. Our proofs use combinatorial arguments similar to the trace method from random matrix theory.
Finally, we push the diagram analysis to a number of iterations that scales with the dimension n of the input matrix, proving that the tree approximation still holds for a simple variant of power iteration all the way up to n^{Ω(1)} iterations
Maximum Bipartite vs. Triangle-Free Subgraph
Full text linkGiven a (multi)graph G which contains a bipartite subgraph with ρ edges, what is the largest triangle-free subgraph of G that can be found efficiently? We present an SDP-based algorithm that finds one with at least 0.8823 ρ edges, thus improving on the subgraph with 0.878 ρ edges obtained by the classic Max-Cut algorithm of Goemans and Williamson. On the other hand, by a reduction from Håstad’s 3-bit PCP we show that it is NP-hard to find a triangle-free subgraph with (25 / 26 + ε) ρ ≈ (0.961 + ε) ρ edges.
As an application, we classify the Maximum Promise Constraint Satisfaction Problem, denoted byMaxPCSP(G, H), for all bipartite G: Given an input (multi)graph X which admits a G-colouring satisfying ρ edges, find an H-colouring of X that satisfies ρ edges. This problem is solvable in polynomial time, apart from trivial cases, if H contains a triangle, and is NP-hard otherwise
New and Improved Bounds for Markov Paging
Full text linkIn the Markov paging model, one assumes that page requests are drawn from a Markov chain over the pages in memory, and the goal is to maintain a fast cache that suffers few page faults in expectation. While computing the optimal online algorithm (OPT) for this problem naively takes time exponential in the size of the cache, the best-known polynomial-time approximation algorithm is the dominating distribution algorithm due to Lund, Phillips and Reingold (FOCS 1994), who showed that the algorithm is 4-competitive against OPT. We substantially improve their analysis and show that the dominating distribution algorithm is in fact 2-competitive against OPT. We also show a lower bound of 1.5907-competitiveness for this algorithm - to the best of our knowledge, no such lower bound was previously known
An Upper Bound on the Weisfeiler-Leman Dimension
Full text linkThe Weisfeiler-Leman (WL) algorithms form a family of incomplete approaches to the graph isomorphism problem. They recently found various applications in algorithmic group theory and machine learning. In fact, the algorithms form a parameterized family: for each k ∈ ℕ there is a corresponding k-dimensional algorithm WLk. The algorithms become increasingly powerful with increasing dimension, but at the same time the running time increases. The WL-dimension of a graph G is the smallest k ∈ ℕ for which WLk correctly decides isomorphism between G and every other graph. In some sense, the WL-dimension measures how difficult it is to test isomorphism of one graph to others using a fairly general class of combinatorial algorithms. Nowadays, it is a standard measure in descriptive complexity theory for the structural complexity of a graph.
We prove that the WL-dimension of a graph on n vertices is at most 3/20 ⋅ n + o(n) = 0.15 ⋅ n + o(n).
Reducing the question to coherent configurations, the proof develops various techniques to analyze their structure. This includes sufficient conditions under which a fiber can be restored uniquely up to isomorphism if it is removed, a recursive proof exploiting a degree reduction and treewidth bounds, as well as an exhaustive analysis of interspaces involving small fibers.
As a base case, we also analyze the dimension of coherent configurations with small fiber size and thereby graphs with small color class size
Universal Online Contention Resolution with Preselected Order
Full text linkOnline contention resolution scheme (OCRS) is a powerful technique for online decision making, which - in the case of matroids - given a matroid and a prior distribution of active elements, selects a subset of active elements that satisfies the matroid constraint in an online fashion. OCRS has been studied mostly for product distributions in the literature. Recently, universal OCRS, that works even for correlated distributions, has gained interest, because it naturally generalizes the classic notion, and its existence in the random-order arrival model turns out to be equivalent to the matroid secretary conjecture. However, currently very little is known about how to design universal OCRSs for any arrival model. In this work, we consider a natural and relatively flexible arrival model, where the OCRS is allowed to preselect (i.e., non-adaptively select) the arrival order of the elements, and within this model, we design simple and optimal universal OCRSs that are computationally efficient. In the course of deriving our OCRSs, we also discover an efficient reduction from universal online contention resolution to the matroid secretary problem for any arrival model, answering a question posed in [Dughmi, 2020]
Saturation Problems for Families of Automata
Full text linkFamilies of deterministic finite automata (FDFA) represent regular ω-languages through their ultimately periodic words (UP-words). An FDFA accepts pairs of words, where the first component corresponds to a prefix of the UP-word, and the second component represents a period of that UP-word. An FDFA is termed saturated if, for each UP-word, either all or none of the pairs representing that UP-word are accepted. We demonstrate that determining whether a given FDFA is saturated can be accomplished in polynomial time, thus improving the known PSPACE upper bound by an exponential. We illustrate the application of this result by presenting the first polynomial learning algorithms for representations of the class of all regular ω-languages. Furthermore, we establish that deciding a weaker property, referred to as almost saturation, is PSPACE-complete. Since FDFAs do not necessarily define regular ω-languages when they are not saturated, we also address the regularity problem and show that it is PSPACE-complete. Finally, we explore a variant of FDFAs called families of deterministic weak automata (FDWA), where the semantics for the periodic part of the UP-word considers ω-words instead of finite words. We demonstrate that saturation for FDWAs is also decidable in polynomial time, that FDWAs always define regular ω-languages, and we compare the succinctness of these different models
Verification of Linear Dynamical Systems via O-Minimality of the Real Numbers
Full text linkA discrete-time linear dynamical system (LDS) is given by an update matrix M ∈ ℝ^{d× d}, and has the trajectories ⟨s, Ms, M²s, …⟩ for s ∈ ℝ^d. Reachability-type decision problems of linear dynamical systems, most notably the Skolem Problem, lie at the forefront of decidability: typically, sound and complete algorithms are known only in low dimensions, and these rely on sophisticated tools from number theory and Diophantine approximation. Recently, however, o-minimality has emerged as a counterpoint to these number-theoretic tools that allows us to decide certain modifications of the classical problems of LDS without any dimension restrictions. In this paper, we first introduce the Decomposition Method, a framework that captures all applications of o-minimality to decision problems of LDS that are currently known to us. We then use the Decomposition Method to show decidability of the Robust Safety Problem (restricted to bounded initial sets) in arbitrary dimension: given a matrix M, a bounded semialgebraic set S of initial points, and a semialgebraic set T of unsafe points, it is decidable whether there exists ε > 0 such that all orbits that begin in the ε-ball around S avoid T
LIPIcs, Volume 335, ECRTS 2025, Complete Volume
No full textLIPIcs, Volume 335, ECRTS 2025, Complete Volum
LoRaHART: Hardware-Aware Real-Time Scheduling for LoRa
Full text linkTime-sensitive data acquisition is critical for many Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) applications, such as healthcare monitoring and industrial Internet of Things. Among the available LPWAN technologies, LoRa (Long Range) has emerged as a leading choice, offering kilometer-scale communication with minimal power consumption and enabling high-density deployments across large areas. However, the conventional ALOHA-based Medium Access Control (MAC) in LoRa is not designed to support real-time communication over large-scale networks. This paper introduces LoRaHART, a novel approach that overcomes two critical, under-explored limitations in Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) LoRa gateways that impact real-time performance. LoRa gateways have limited capacity for demodulation of parallel transmissions and their antenna can either transmit or receive at any time instant. LoRaHART incorporates a hardware-aware super-frame structure, comprising both Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) slots as well as opportunistic retransmissions using Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA), designed to mitigate the above constraints. We use a partial packing and makespan minimization algorithm to schedule periodic real-time transmissions efficiently within the TDMA slots, and also develop a probabilistic node contention model for CSMA retransmissions, providing analytical guarantees for deadline satisfaction under ideal channel conditions. Our evaluation of LoRaHART on a 40-node LoRa testbed demonstrates significant improvements over existing solutions in practice, achieving an average Packet Reception Ratio of 98% and a 45% higher airtime utilization than the best performing baseline
Detecting Low-Density Mixtures in High-Quantile Tails for pWCET Estimation
Full text linkThe variability arising from sophisticated hardware and software solutions in cutting-edge embedded products causes software to exhibit complex execution time distributions. Mixture distributions can happen, with different density (weight), as a result of inherent different features in the execution platform and multiple operational scenarios. In the context of probabilistic WCET (pWCET) analysis based on Extreme Value Theory (EVT), where identical distribution is a pre-requisite, mixtures are typically intercepted by applying stationarity tests on the full sample. Those tests, however, are instructed to detect only mixtures with sufficiently high probability (weight) and disregard low-density mixtures (which are unlikely to be preserved in the high-quantile tail of the sample) as they would prevent any form of stationarity. Nonetheless, low-density mixture distributions can persist and even exacerbate in the tail, and, when not considered, they can impair pWCET estimation in EVT-based approaches, leading to overly pessimistic or optimistic bounds. In this work, we propose TailID, an iterative point-wise approach that builds on the asymptotic convergence of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) of the Extreme Value Index (EVI) parameter ξ to detect low-density mixture distributions on high-quantile tails and use this information to steer EVT tail selection. The benefits of the proposed method are assessed on synthetic mixture distributions and real data collected on an industrially representative embedded platform