Quorum-based mutual exclusion algorithm for mobile ad-hoc network (MANET)

The growth of complex software, communication interfaces and the presence of low-cost processors are key factors for designing distributed applications. Distributed computation allows processes to run concurrently, share resources and work independent of one another. Resource sharing is one of the main advantages of distributed computing. Distributed computations that involve sharing of resources require that only one process is allowed to enter critical section (CS) at a time. Therefore, the mutual exclusion issue is to make sure that no more than one process is allowed to access shared resource at a time. Existing literature consists of different algorithms with varied performance levels to achieve mutual exclusion. These algorithms have been classified as token-based and permission-based. In the paper, we present a quorum-based mutual exclusion algorithm under permission-based category. Our algorithm is message efficient and suitable for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We represent the model of the proposed algorithm along with its assumptions and discuss an application of MANET in which quorum-based mutual exclusion algorithm would be applied.