A Hierarchical Approach to Handle Group Mutual Exclusion Problem in Distributed Systems

摘要

A hierarchical algorithm to solve the group mutual exclusion problem has been proposed. We consider a hierarchical arrangement where the nodes are divided in to clusters. The algorithm uses a token-based protocol to handle inter-cluster requests and a centralized protocol for intra-cluster requests. The algorithm also uses a two-level priority scheme in order to assign relative weights to fairness and concurrency. Unlike other algorithms, the message complexity of our algorithm is proportional to the number of clusters rather than the number of nodes. Also, a new metric has been proposed to measure the level of coherence. The proposed algorithm is the first hierarchical solution to the group mutual exclusion problem.