A scheme for the solutions of the h-out of-k mutual exclusion problems using k-arbiters

Abstract

The k-arbiter is a well-established solution for the problem of the h-out of-k mutual exclusion. Though the solution using k-arbiters are simple and highly fault tolerant, the size of the quorums is high comparing to that of 1-coteries and for large values of k it becomes worse. A k-arbiter needs to have intersection between any k+1 quorums. Here we propose k(h)-arbiter, an efficient and general solution, for the h-out of-k mutual exclusion problems. It is an extension to k-arbiter. Here the quorum construction, using k-arbiters, considers h. The quorum size is variable and inversely proportional to the value of h for a specific value of k. The quorum size is smaller than that of k-arbiters for hGt1. We apply this technique on two simple k-arbiter construction schemes, uniform k-arbiter and binomial k-arbiter.