Reliable Self-Stabilizing Communication for Quasi Rendezvous

TL;DR

This paper introduces three self-stabilizing communication protocols under a read/write atomicity model, ensuring reliable, fair, and quasi rendezvous link communication primitives in asynchronous networks.

Contribution

It presents novel self-stabilizing protocols for reliable link communication primitives, including weak and quasi rendezvous, suitable as modular components for complex systems.

Findings

Protocols guarantee reliable communication regardless of initial states.

Each primitive ensures at least one read per write in asynchronous networks.

Protocols are self-stabilizing and can be used as black boxes in larger systems.

Abstract

The paper presents three self-stabilizing protocols for basic fair and reliable link communication primitives. We assume a link-register communication model under read/write atomicity, where every process can read from but cannot write into its neighbours' registers. The first primitive guarantees that any process writes a new value in its register(s) only after all its neighbours have read the previous value, whatever the initial scheduling of processes' actions. The second primitive implements a "weak rendezvous" communication mechanism by using an alternating bit protocol: whenever a process consecutively writes n values (possibly the same ones) in a register, each neighbour is guaranteed to read each value from the register at least once. On the basis of the previous protocol, the third primitive implements a "quasi rendezvous": in words, this primitive ensures furthermore that there exists exactly one reading between two writing operations All protocols are self-stabilizing and run in asynchronous arbitrary networks. The goal of the paper is in handling each primitive by a separate procedure, which can be used as a "black box" in more involved self-stabilizing protocols.