A flexible formal framework for masking/demasking faults

  • Authors:

  • B. Ayeb;A. Farhat

  • Affiliations:

  • Faculty of Sciences/DSI, Monastir Center University, Monastir 5050, Tunisia and Faculty of Sciences/DMI, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Que., Canada J1K 2R1;Faculty of Sciences/DMI, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Que., Canada J1K 2R1

  • Venue:
  • Information Sciences—Informatics and Computer Science: An International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

The literature includes a variety of techniques to address the Byzantine Generals Problem and the generalization/specialization of it that we call the Byzantine approach. While the main goal within the Byzantine framework is to circumvent and mask the effect of unreliable units (e.g., traitors), much research has been done on identifying (i.e., demasking) unreliable units. This is often called fault identification in system diagnosis. This paper focuses on the identification of unreliable units within the Byzantine framework. Beyond its theoretical interest, an identification of faulty units contributes to accelerate the agreement process itself and drastically reduce the number of messages exchanged between units. The main features of this work are twofold. It does not impose additional assumptions or constraints on the agreement process. It limits the overhead for identifying unreliable units--the identification process is in O(n3).