A self‐stabilizing token‐based k‐out‐of‐ℓ exclusion algorithm

In this paper, we present the first self‐stabilizing solution to the k‐out‐of‐ℓ exclusion problem on a ring. The k‐out‐of‐ℓ exclusion problem is a generalization of the well‐known mutual exclusion problem—there are ℓ units of the shared resources, any process can request k $(1 \leq k \leq \ell)$ units of the shared resources, and no resource unit can be allocated to more than one process at one time. The space requirement of the proposed algorithm is independent of ℓ for all processors except a special processor, called Root. The stabilization time is only 5n, where n is the size of the ring. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.