Fault tolerance in sensor networks: Performance comparison of some gossip algorithms

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of three versions of the well known gossip algorithm, namely: basic gossip, push-sum and broadcast, for the distributed solution of averaging problems. The main focus is on the impact of link failures that, reducing the network connectivity, decrease the convergence speed. As a similar effect occurs in non fully-meshed networks, because of a limited coverage radius of the nodes, a comparison is made between these two scenarios. The considered algorithms can require optimization of some share factors; to this purpose, we resort to simulations, but the conclusions achieved are confirmed through analytical arguments, exploiting the concept of potential function.