Quorum-Based Mutual Exclusion Algorithms: A Survey

The development of highly complex software, communication interfaces and the presence of low-cost processors are key factors towards the design of distributed applications. By distributing a computation, processes are permitted to run concurrently, share resources among themselves and at the same time working independent of each other. Distributed computations that involve sharing of resources require that only one process is allowed to enter its critical section (CS) at a time. Therefore, mutual exclusion is an important coordination issue for distributed algorithms. In the existing literature, different algorithms with varied performance levels have used various techniques to achieve mutual exclusion. Depending on the technique used, these algorithms have been classified as token-based and permission-based. In the paper, we present a broad survey and analysis of well known quorum-based mutual exclusion algorithms under permission-based category. The paper also presents the characteristics and related issues of mutual exclusion algorithms and concludes with their comparative analysis. Keywords— Critical Section, Distributed Computing, Group Mutual Exclusion, Mutual exclusion, Quorum.