An efficient two-tier causal protocol for mobile distributed systems

PLoS One. 2013 Apr 9;8(4):e59904. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059904. Print 2013.

Abstract

Causal ordering is a useful tool for mobile distributed systems (MDS) to reduce the non-determinism induced by three main aspects: host mobility, asynchronous execution, and unpredictable communication delays. Several causal protocols for MDS exist. Most of them, in order to reduce the overhead and the computational cost over wireless channels and mobile hosts (MH), ensure causal ordering at and according to the causal view of the Base Stations. Nevertheless, these protocols introduce certain disadvantage, such as unnecessary inhibition at the delivery of messages. In this paper, we present an efficient causal protocol for groupware that satisfies the MDS's constraints, avoiding unnecessary inhibitions and ensuring the causal delivery based on the view of the MHs. One interesting aspect of our protocol is that it dynamically adapts the causal information attached to each message based on the number of messages with immediate dependency relation, and this is not directly proportional to the number of MHs.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Communication
  • Computer Communication Networks*
  • Humans
  • Information Science / methods*

Grants and funding

The authors have no support or funding to report.