Service time optimal self-stabilizing token circulation protocol on anonymous undirectional rings

• Published in: 21st IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, 2002. Proceedings pp. 80 - 89
• Main Author: Johnen, C.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2002
• Subjects: Access protocols; Modems; Network topology; Nominations and elections; Processor scheduling; Robustness
• ISBN: 0769516599; 9780769516592
• ISSN: 1060-9857; 2575-8462
• DOI: 10.1109/RELDIS.2002.1180176

We present a self-stabilizing token circulation protocol on unidirectional anonymous rings. This protocol requires no processor identifiers or distinguished processor (i.e. all processors perform the same algorithm). The protocol is randomized and self-stabilizing, meaning that starting from an arbitrary configuration (in response to an arbitrary perturbation modifying the memory state), it reaches (with probability 1) a legitimate configuration (i.e. a configuration with only one token in the network). All previous randomized self-stabilizing token circulation protocols designed to work under unfair distributed schedulers have the same drawback: once stabilized, service time is slow (in the best case, it is bounded by 2N where N is the ring size). Once stabilized, our protocol provides an optimal service: after N computation steps, each processor has obtained the token once. The protocol can be used to implement fair distributed mutual exclusion in any ring topology network.