A robust group membership algorithm for distributed real-time systems

An algorithm is presented by which nonfaulty processors of a group of fixed size will be able to maintain a consistent and timely knowledge of the group membership. The authors assume an architecture in which the broadcast network is accessed by some time domain multiplexing techniques where the exclusive right to transmit messages is granted to each processor once in every `cycle´. In an execution of the proposed algorithm, every nonfaulty processor knows of any processor failure within at most two cycles following the cycle in which the failure occurred, and a restarted processor can join the group in two cycles. At most less than half the number of processors are assumed to fail in any three consecutive cycles