Decompositions of positive self-dual boolean functions

A coterie, which is used to realize mutual exclusion in distributed systems, is a family C of subsets such that any pair of subsets in C has at least one element in common, and such that no subset in C contains any other subset in C. Associate with a family of subsets C a positive Boolean function f_c such that f_c(x) = 1 if the Boolean vector x is equal to or greater than the characteristic vector of some subset in C, and 0 otherwise. It is known that C is a coterie if and only if f_c is dual-minor, and is a non-dominated (ND) coterie if and only if f_c is self-dual. We study in this paper the decomposition of a positive self-dual function into smaller positive self-dual functions, as it explains how to represent and how to construct the corresponding ND coterie. A key step is how to decompose a positive dual-minor function f into a conjunction of positive self-dual functions f₁,f₂,…, f_k. In addition to the general condition for this decomposition, we clarify the condition for the decomposition into two functions f₁, and f₂, and introduce the concept of canonical decomposition. Then we present an algorithm that determines a minimal canonical decomposition, and a very simple algorithm that usually gives a decomposition close to minimal. The decomposition of a general self-dual function is also discussed.