Self-stabilizing mutual exclusion in the presence of faulty nodes

Abstract

The paper presents the RatchetFT distributed fault tolerant mutual exclusion algorithm for processor rings. RatchetFT is self-stabilizing, in that if mutual exclusion is lost due to any sequence of online failures and repairs of processors, mutual exclusion will eventually be regained. This research demonstrates that self-stabilization can be achieved in the presence of faulty processors, provided that these faulty processors always appear to behave incorrectly. Self-stabilization is achievable even if faulty processor behavior is not restricted to transient failures or other simple failure models. The key results of the paper include the specification of RatchetFT and a detailed sketch of its correctness proof.<>