Arbitration-based Reliable Distributed Mutual Exclusion for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Abstract—Distributed mutual exclusion enables critical resources to be shared amongst different mobile nodes in a Mobile Ad-hoc environment. In this paper, we place all nodes in a vicinity into regions. By suitably manipulating the behavior of arbitrator nodes, that form the bridge between two neighboring regions, we have ensured that permission is granted by every participating node, irrespective of the size of the network. We have used a single additional message, the HOLD message, to ensure that the DME correctness is achieved for both inter-region and intra-region communications. Fault tolerance arguments for the proposed algorithm are also presented. To our knowledge, this is the first distributed mutual exclusion algorithm that uses the notion of regions and fault tolerance in MANETs.