6.885  Distributed Algorithms: New Topics and Techniques

This subject qualifies as a Theoretical Computer Science Engineering Concentration subject.

This special-topics theoretical course will cover new results in distributed computing theory, with emphasis on the mathematical techniques used to obtain the results. The course will be roughly divided into two parts. The first part will focus on a collection of mathematical methods and their applications to a wide range of basic problems arising in distributed systems. The second part will focus on a new and important sub-area of distributed computing theory---stationary and mobile wireless networks---and will present a range of algorithmic and analysis methods that are emerging as useful for solving problems in this sub-area.

The second part of the course, on wireless network algorithms, will be organized by topic, starting from low-level network management, and finishing with high-level applications to data management and robot control. In between, we will consider a variety of problems of communication, computation, and building abstraction layers.