Reaching self-stabilising distributed synchronisation with COTS Ethernet components: the WALDEN approach

Self-Stabilizing Periodic Mutual-exclusive Propagation in Sparse Networks

“…In practice, for building efficient multi-valued messagepassing systems, it is often desired that some underlying synchronous systems be established first, with which the higherlayer messages can be synchronously delivered in peer-to-peer networks. For this, the MEP primitive is proposed in [11] with employing 1-bit synchronization signals for reaching efficient self-stabilizing synchronization and TDMA communication in arbitrarily connected networks. In the provided prototype system, the MEP primitive is realized with COTS Ethernet components and other low-cost common devices.…”

“…Especially, as the network connectivity required in Byzantine fault-tolerant message primitives [7,10] is gravely bounded, these theoretically high-reliable message primitives can hardly be well supported in most real-world low-cost communication systems. In providing relatively more accessible but still useful propagation primitives upon arbitrarily connected networks, [11] proposes a practical message propagation primitive in building self-stabilizing synchronization systems without introducing high extra costs. In [11], the propagation of the messages is governed by the socalled mutual-exclusive propagation rule.…”

“…In providing relatively more accessible but still useful propagation primitives upon arbitrarily connected networks, [11] proposes a practical message propagation primitive in building self-stabilizing synchronization systems without introducing high extra costs. In [11], the propagation of the messages is governed by the socalled mutual-exclusive propagation rule. Namely, when this propagation rule is imposed on some specific messages, these messages would be propagated in the network without being overlapped with each other.…”

“…However, the MEP process introduced in [11] is tightly coupled with other stages of the self-stabilizing synchronization protocol. Especially in providing the desired self-stabilization property, some time parameters of the MEP primitive are related to the overall synchronization cycles.…”

“…Especially in providing the desired self-stabilization property, some time parameters of the MEP primitive are related to the overall synchronization cycles. Meanwhile, the overall synchronization process proposed in [11] relies on high-precision delay measurement and global message broadcast, which can hardly be supported in large scale systems with limited power supplies such as the wireless sensor networks (WSN), Internet of things (IoT), and other emerging low-cost networking technologies. Also, the MEP patterns introduced in [11] are not well investigated in sparsely connected networks.…”