Lock-based self-stabilizing distributed mutual exclusion algorithms

Abstract

In 1974, Dijkstra introduced the notion of self-stabilization and presented a token circulation distributed mutual exclusion (DMX) protocol as the first self-stabilizing (SS) algorithm. Since then, many variations of SS DMX algorithms have been presented. Most, if not all, of these algorithms impose stronger assumptions on their execution environments than those provided by common distributed systems. Independently, non SS DMX algorithms have been studied extensively in the last 15 years. This paper presents two SS DMX algorithms that are based on existing non SS DMX algorithms: one is based on a link-locking algorithm and the other is on a node-locking algorithm. Our algorithms assume execution environments that are close to those provided by common distributed systems. Furthermore, they provide better synchronization delays than token circulation SS DMX algorithms. We have implemented our algorithms and tested them with various initial configurations.