New algorithms for coupled tasks scheduling – a survey

¹ Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Z. Noskowskiego 12/14, 61-704 Poznan, Poland
jblazewicz@cs.put.poznan.pl
² Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology, ul. Piotrowo 2, 60-965 Poznan, Poland
³ Computer Science Division, Physics Faculty, Adam Mickiewicz University, ul. Umultowska 85, 61-614 Poznan, Poland

Received: 5 October 2012
Accepted: 12 October 2012

Abstract

The coupled tasks scheduling problem is a class of scheduling problems introduced for beam steering software of sophisticated radar devices, called phased arrays. Due to increasing popularity of such radars, the importance of coupled tasks scheduling is constantly growing. Unfortunately, most of the coupled tasks problems are NP-hard, and only a few practically usable algorithms for such problems were found. This paper provides a survey of already known complexity results of various variants of coupled tasks problems. Then, it complements previous results by providing experimental results of two new polynomial algorithms for coupled tasks scheduling, which are: an exact algorithm for 1|(1,4,1),strictchains|C_max problem, and a fast heuristic algorithm for more general 1|(1,2k, 1), strictchains|C_max problem, where k ∈ ℕ.