Abstract
Embedded distributed systems have become an integral part of safety-critical computing applications, necessitating system designs that incorporate fault tolerant clock synchronization in order to achieve ultra-reliable assurance levels. Many efficient clock synchronization protocols do not, however, address Byzantine failures, and most protocols that do tolerate Byzantine failures do not self-stabilize. Of the Byzantine self-stabilizing clock synchronization algorithms that exist in the literature, they are based on either unjustifiably strong assumptions about initial synchrony of the nodes or on the existence of a common pulse at the nodes. The Byzantine self-stabilizing clock synchronization protocol presented here does not rely on any assumptions about the initial state of the clocks. Furthermore, there is neither a central clock nor an externally generated pulse system. The proposed protocol converges deterministically, is scalable, and self-stabilizes in a short amount of time. The convergence time is linear with respect to the self-stabilization period. Proofs of the correctness of the protocol as well as the results of formal verification efforts are reported.
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Malekpour, M.R. (2006). A Byzantine-Fault Tolerant Self-stabilizing Protocol for Distributed Clock Synchronization Systems. In: Datta, A.K., Gradinariu, M. (eds) Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems. SSS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4280. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49823-0_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49823-0_29
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