A new load distribution strategy for linear network with communication delays

In this paper, we propose a new load distribution strategy called 'send-and-receive' for scheduling divisible loads, in a linear network of processors with communication delay. This strategy is designed to optimally utilize the network resources and thereby minimizes the processing time of entire processing load. A closed-form expression for optimal size of load fractions and processing time are derived when the processing load originates at processor located in boundary and interior of the network. A condition on processor and link speed is also derived to ensure that the processors are continuously engaged in load distributions. This paper also presents a parallel implementation of 'digital watermarking problem' on a personal computer-based Pentium Linear Network (PLN) topology. Experiments are carried out to study the performance of the proposed strategy and results are compared with other strategies found in literature.