A Quorum Based (m, h, k)-Resource Allocation Algorithm

In this paper, we present a quorum based algorithm for (m,h, k)-resource allocation problem, i.e., a conflict resolution problem to control a distributed system consisting of n users and m critical resources so that the following two requirements are satisfied: at any given time, at most h (out of m) resources can be utilized by some users simultaneously and each resource is utilized by at most k concurrent users. The problem is a natural generalization of several wellstudied conflict resolution problems such as mutual exclusion, k-mutual exclusion, generalized mutual exclusion and group mutual exclusion. The (m,h, k)resource allocation problem can be solved by employing a k-mutual exclusion algorithm, however, it is inefficient in terms of the message complexity.We thus propose a new algorithm and a new quorum system (m,h, k)-coterie used in it. Then we show that all requirements of the problem are guaranteed, and the maximum degree hk of concurrency is achieved as desired and the message complexity is the same as for a single k-coterie based algorithm.