This paper describes an algorithm for coloring the nodes of a planar graph with no more than six colors using a self-stabilizing approach. The first part illustrates the coloring algorithm on a directed acyclic version of the given planar graph. The second part describes a selfstabilizing algorithm for generating the directed acyclic version of the planar graph, and combines the two algorithms into one.
Key words Self-stabilization - Distributed algorithm-Graph coloring - Directed acyclic graph - Atomicity
Sukumar Ghosh received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Calcutta University in 1971. From 1969 to 1984, he taught at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. During 1976–77, he was a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Dortmund, Germany. Since 1984, he is with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Iowa. His current research interests are in the areas of Distributed Systems, Petri Nets and Self-Stabilizating Systems.
Mehmet Hakan Karaata received the Sc. B. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Hacettepe University in Turkey in 1987, and the M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Iowa in 1990. He is currently studying towards his Ph.D. at the same university. His research interests are in the areas of Distributed Systems, Self-Stabilizing Systems and Database Systems.
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CCR-9109078, and the Old Gold Summer Fellowship of the University of Iowa. An abstract of this paper was presented at the 29th Allerton Conference on Control, Communication & Computing in October 1991.