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Designing Self-Stabilizing Systems Using Game Theory

Published: 20 September 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Self-stabilizing systems tolerate transient faults by always returning to a legitimate system state within a finite time. This goal is challenged by several system features such as arbitrary system states after faults, various process execution models, and constrained process communication means. This work designs self-stabilizing distributed algorithms from the perspective of game theory, achieving an intended system goal through private goals of processes. We propose a generic game design for identifying a maximal independent set (MIS) or a maximal weighted independent set (MWIS) among all processes in a distributed system. From the generic game several specific games can be defined which differ in whether and how neighboring players influence each other. Turning the game designs into self-stabilizing algorithms, we obtain the first algorithms for the MWIS problem and also the first self-stabilizing MIS algorithm that considers node degree (including an analysis of its performance ratio). We also show how to handle simultaneous moves of processes in some process execution models. Simulation results indicate that, for various representative network topologies, the new algorithm outperforms existing methods in terms of MIS size and convergence rate. For the MWIS problem, the new algorithms performed only slightly worse than centralized greedy counterparts.

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cover image ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems  Volume 11, Issue 3
September 2016
117 pages
ISSN:1556-4665
EISSN:1556-4703
DOI:10.1145/3000604
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 20 September 2016
Accepted: 01 June 2016
Revised: 01 May 2016
Received: 01 October 2015
Published in TAAS Volume 11, Issue 3

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Author Tags

  1. Distributed algorithms
  2. game theory
  3. independent set
  4. self-stabilization

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  • Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan

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  • (2018)Self-stabilization Through the Lens of Game TheoryIt's All About Coordination10.1007/978-3-319-90089-6_2(21-37)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2018
  • (2018)Game-Theoretic Approach to Self-stabilizing Minimal Independent Dominating SetsInternet and Distributed Computing Systems10.1007/978-3-030-02738-4_15(173-184)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2018
  • (2017)Self-Adaptation to Device Distribution in the Internet of ThingsACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems10.1145/310575812:3(1-29)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2017

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