Lower Bound for the Communication Complexity of the Russian Cards Problem

Abstract

In this paper it is shown that no public announcement scheme that can be modeled in Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) can solve the Russian Cards Problem (RCP) in one announcement. Since DEL is a general model for any public announcement scheme we conclude that there exist no single announcement solution to the RCP. The proof demonstrates the utility of DEL in proving lower bounds for communication protocols. It is also shown that a general version of RCP has no two announcement solution when the adversary has sufficiently large number of cards.