A note on Raymond's tree based algorithm for distributed mutual exclusion

Abstract

The mutual exclusion problem is an important problem in distributed systems. The fairness property is a crucial attribute of distributed mutual exclusion algorithms. All solutions to the distributed mutual exclusion problem are expected to implement at least starvation freedom as the fairness criterion. In certain situations, a stronger fairness criterion is desirable. In this paper, we have substantially modified Raymond's tree based distributed mutual exclusion algorithm to incorporate such a fairness criterion, viz., the least executed criterion. The lower and upper bounds on the number of messages generated per critical section execution are 0 and 2 D respectively, where D is the diameter of a spanning tree of the distributed system. These bounds are the same as those of Raymond's algorithm.