Distributed Self-Stabilizing Systems
Lih-Chyau Wuu and Shing-Tsaan Huang# Department of Electronic Engineering National Yunlin Institute of Technology Touliu, Taiwan, R.O.C. *Department of Computer Science National Tsing Hua University Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
A distributed system is self-stabilizing if, starting from any state, possibly illegitimate, the system is guaranteed to reach a legitimate state in finite time. The self-stabilization property makes a system tolerant to transient faults which usually arise from environmental disturbances such as electromagnetic noises or radiations. This paper was prepared as an introduction to self-stabilizing systems. Various execution models and proof techniques are first discussed. Applications of self-stabilizing systems are then addressed.