Improved Low-Overhead Communication-Efficient String Reconciliation and Edit Distance

2026-08-25

AI Summary

本文提出了一种低开销、通信高效的算法，用于解决长字符串相似性比较和同步问题，通过仅使用O(k log^3 n)位通信和O(n log k)时间来确定两字符串间的编辑距离。

Abstract

Suppose two parties, Alice and Bob, hold long character strings, $X$ and $Y$, respectively, and they are interested in determining how similar $X$ and $Y$ are. {Moreover, they want to exchange the strings with cost proportional to their degree of dissimilarity.} Such problems arise, for example, in database and file system synchronization operations, as well as in DNA sequence comparisons. Since the strings are long, we are interested in methods that are communication-efficient and have low overhead in terms of the computations that Alice and Bob must perform, when the strings are similar enough. In this paper, we provide a simple low-overhead communication-efficient algorithms for such string reconciliation and edit distance problems, determining the edit distance $k$ between $X$ and $Y$ using only $O(k\log^3 n)$ bits of communication and $O(n\log k)$ time overhead, with high probability.

Problem

• String Reconciliation
• Edit Distance
• Communication-Efficient

Innovation

• low-overhead
• communication-efficient
• string reconciliation
• edit distance
• algorithm