A dynamic programming approach of finding an optimal broadcast schedule in minimizing total flow time

Wun-Tat Chan, Francis Y. L. Chin, Yong Zhang, Hong Zhu, Hong Shen, Prudence W. H. Wong
2006 Journal of combinatorial optimization  
We study the problem of (off-line) broadcast scheduling in minimizing total flow time and propose a dynamic programming approach to compute an optimal broadcast schedule. Suppose the broadcast server has k pages and the last page request arrives at time n. The optimal schedule can be computed in O(k 3 (n+k) k−1 ) time for the case that the server has a single broadcast channel. For m channels case, i.e., the server can broadcast m different pages at a time where m < k, the optimal schedule can
more » ... e computed in O(n k−m ) time when k and m are constants. Note that this broadcast scheduling problem is NP-hard when k is a variable and will take O(n k−m+1 ) time when k is fixed and m ≥ 1 with the straightforward implementation of the dynamic programming approach.
doi:10.1007/s10878-006-7128-7 fatcat:hqxfbyjvg5dk5iqd6gpcyyj2q4