An Improved Algorithm for Distributed Trigger Counting in Ring

Consider a distributed system with n processors, which receive triggers from the outside world. The distributed trigger counting (DTC) problem is to raise an alarm if the total number of triggers over the system reaches w, which is an user-specified input. DTC is used as a primitive operation in many applications, such as distributed monitoring, global snapshots, etc. Many of the earlier studies on DTC was done using non-deterministic algorithms. In this paper, we propose a deterministic algorithm for the DTC problem with a message complexity of O(n log w log n) and each node in the system receives O(n log w) number of messages, which is an improvement over earlier result for certain values of w. The distribution of triggers among the n nodes may be arbitrary. This paper gives insight into the deterministic algorithm for the DTC problem. Also to the best of our knowledge the overall message complexity and per node message complexity are better than earlier deterministic algorithms.