Multiple choice tries
Luc Devroye, Gábor Lugosi, Gahyun Park and Wojchiek Szpankowski
Random Structures and Algorithms 2007.

Abstract

In this paper we consider tries built from n strings such that each string can be chosen from a pool of k strings, each of them generated by a discrete i.i.d. source. Three cases are considered: k = 2, k is large but fixed, and k ∼ c log n. The goal in each case is to obtain tries as balanced as possible. Various parameters such as height and fill-up level are analyzed. It is shown that for two-choice tries a 50% reduction in height is achieved when compared to ordinary tries. In a greedy on-line construction when the string that minimizes the depth of insertion for every pair is inserted, the height is only reduced by 25%. In order to further reduce the height by another 25%, we design a more refined on-line algorithm. The total computation time of the algorithm is O(n log n). Furthermore, when we choose the best among k ≥ 2 strings, then for large but fixed k the height is asymptotically equal to the typical depth in a trie. Finally, we show that further improvement can be achieved if the number of choices for each string is proportional to log n. In this case highly balanced trees can be constructed by a simple greedy algorithm for which the difference between the height and the fill-up level is bounded by a constant with high probability. This, in turn, has implications for distributed hash tables, leading to a randomized ID management algorithm in peer-to-peer networks such that, with high probability, the ratio between the maximum and the minimum load of a processor is O(1).

[Edit]