Local Synchronization on Oriented Rings

Abstract

We consider the local mutual exclusion (LME) problem on a ring network. We present two self-stabilizing distributed algorithms, with local mutual exclusion, for the dining philosophers problem on a bidirectional oriented ring with two distinguished processes. The first algorithm, which uses the composite atomicity model, works under an unfair distributed daemon. The second algorithm, which uses the read-write atomicity model, works under a weakly fair daemon. Both algorithms use at most two extra bits per process to enforce local mutual exclusion. Both algorithms are derived from a simpler algorithm using transformations which can be applied to other algorithms on the ring. The technique can be generalized to more complex topologies.