Online interval scheduling to maximize total satisfaction

DOI10.1016/J.TCS.2019.10.046zbMATH Open1436.90052arXiv1805.05436OpenAlexW2983790463WikidataQ126840925 ScholiaQ126840925MaRDI QIDQ2285162FDOQ2285162

Authors: Koji M. Kobayashi

Publication date: 16 January 2020

Published in: Theoretical Computer Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The interval scheduling problem is one variant of the scheduling problem. In this paper, we propose a novel variant of the interval scheduling problem, whose definition is as follows: given jobs are specified by their {em release times}, {em deadlines} and {em profits}. An algorithm must start a job at its release time on one of

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identical machines, and continue processing until its deadline on the machine to complete the job. All the jobs must be completed and the algorithm can obtain the profit of a completed job as a user's satisfaction. It is possible to process more than one job at a time on one machine. The profit of a job is distributed uniformly between its release time and deadline, that is its interval, and the profit gained from a subinterval of a job decreases in reverse proportion to the number of jobs whose intervals intersect with the subinterval on the same machine. The objective of our variant is to maximize the total profit of completed jobs. This formulation is naturally motivated by best-effort requests and responses to them, which appear in many situations. In best-effort requests and responses, the total amount of available resources for users is always invariant and the resources are equally shared with every user. We study online algorithms for this problem. Specifically, we show that for the case where the profits of jobs are arbitrary, there does not exist an algorithm whose competitive ratio is bounded. Then, we consider the case in which the profit of each job is equal to its length, that is, the time interval between its release time and deadline. For this case, we prove that for