Total flow time minimization in a flowshop sequence-dependent group scheduling problem

We have developed a mathematical programming model for minimizing total flow time of the flow shop sequence dependent group scheduling (FSDGS) problem, typically classified as F_m|fmls, S_plk, prmu|∑C_j. As the problem is shown to be strongly NP-hard, a tabu search (TS) algorithm as well as a hybrid ant colony optimization (HACO) algorithm have been developed to heuristically solve the problem. A lower bounding (LB) method based on the Branch-and-Price algorithm is also developed to evaluate the quality of the metaheuristic algorithms. In order to compare the performance of metaheuristic algorithms, random test problems, ranging in size from small, medium, to large are created and solved by both the TS and the HACO algorithms. A comparison shows that the HACO algorithm has a better performance than the TS algorithm. The results of the heuristic algorithms are also compared with the results of the LB method to evaluate the quality of the solutions. The LB method presented in this paper can be generalized to solve the FSDGS problem with other objective functions.     

The problem of optimal robust sensor scheduling

This paper considers the sensor scheduling problem which consists of estimating the state of an uncertain process based on measurements obtained by switching a given set of noisy sensors. The noise and uncertainty models considered in this paper are assumed to be unknown deterministic functions which satisfy an energy type constraint known as an integral quadratic constraint. The problem of optimal robust sensor scheduling is formulated and solution to this problem is given in terms of the existence of suitable solutions to a Riccati differential equation of the game type and a dynamic programming equation. Furthermore, a real time implementable method for sensor scheduling is also presented.     

Dynamic window reduction for the multiple depot vehicle scheduling problem with time windows

We consider a widespread branch-and-price approach to solve the multiple depot vehicle scheduling problem with time windows. We describe a dynamic time window reduction technique to speed up this approach. The time windows are transferred from nodes to arcs in order to take advantage of dual information and to tighten as much as possible the time variable domains. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated through computational experiments on randomly generated instances involving several depots and up to 900 tasks.     

Energy-efficient adaptive sensor scheduling for target tracking in wireless sensor networks

Sensor scheduling is essential to collaborative target tracking in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In the existing works for target tracking in WSNs, such as the information-driven sensor query (IDSQ), the tasking sensors are scheduled to maximize the information gain while minimizing the resource cost based on the uniform sampling intervals, ignoring the changing of the target dynamics and the specific desirable tracking goals. This paper proposes a novel energyefficient adaptive sensor scheduling approach that jointly selects tasking sensors and determines their associated sampling intervals according to the predicted tracking accuracy and tracking energy cost. At each time step, the sensors are scheduled in alternative tracking mode, namely, the fast tracking mode with smallest sampling interval or the tracking maintenance mode with larger sampling interval, according to a specified tracking error threshold. The approach employs an extended Kalman filter (EKF)-based estimation technique to predict the tracking accuracy and adopts an energy consumption model to predict the energy cost. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared to a non-adaptive sensor scheduling approach, the proposed approach can save energy cost significantly without degrading the tracking accuracy.     

Simulation-based optimal sensor scheduling with application to observer trajectory planning

The sensor scheduling problem can be formulated as a controlled hidden Markov model and this paper solves the problem when the state, observation and action spaces are continuous. This general case is important as it is the natural framework for many applications. The aim is to minimise the variance of the estimation error of the hidden state w.r.t. the action sequence. We present a novel simulation-based method that uses a stochastic gradient algorithm to find optimal actions.     

Sensor scheduling over a packet-delaying network

We consider sensor scheduling for state estimation of a scalar system over a packet-delaying network. The current measurement data can be sent over a delay-free channel if the sensor uses larger communication energy; the data will be delayed for one time step if the sensor uses less communication energy. We consider a cost function consisting of a weighted average estimation error and a weighted terminal estimation error and explicitly construct optimal power schedules to minimize this cost function subject to communication energy constraint. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the key ideas of the paper.     

Sensor data scheduling for optimal state estimation with communication energy constraint

In this paper, we consider sensor data scheduling with communication energy constraint. A sensor has to decide whether to send its data to a remote estimator or not due to the limited available communication energy. We construct effective sensor data scheduling schemes that minimize the estimation error and satisfy the energy constraint. Two scenarios are studied: the sensor has sufficient computation capability and the sensor has limited computation capability. For the first scenario, we are able to construct the optimal scheduling scheme. For the second scenario, we are able to provide lower and upper bounds of the minimum error and construct a scheduling scheme whose estimation error falls within the bounds.     

非线性离散系统的信息融合最优预见控制

将信息融合思想引入非线性离散系统的预见控制,提出了信息融合最优预见控制,将对控制系统的所有性能要求和系统动力学转化为可融合信息;然后从信息融合估计的角度,使原问题转化为求控制量的"融合估计"问题.推导了基于卡尔曼滤波器的最优预见控制算法,讨论了预见步数的选取问题,并通过对机械手的转移控制仿真研究说明了信息融合最优预见控制算法的有效性.     

Limiting performance of optimal linear discrete filters

The limiting variance of the estimation error is obtained for the optimal H₂ filter for discrete time systems when the intensity of the measurement noise tends to zero. In particular, an explicit expression is obtained for the lowest achievable mean-square error when the measurement noise is slowly varying and has intensity which tends to zero. This limitation can be characterized completely by the system order, the dimension of the process noise, the number of the system's transmission zeros, and the location of the system's unstable transmission zeros.     

Dynamic sensor transmission power scheduling for remote state estimation

In this paper, we consider the problem of sensor transmission power scheduling for remote state estimation. We assume that the sensor has two transmission energy levels, where the high level corresponds to a high packet reception ratio. By exploiting the feedback information from the remote estimator, we aim to find an optimal transmission power schedule. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process, and analytically develop a simple and optimal dynamic schedule which minimizes the average estimation error under the energy constraint. Furthermore, we derive the necessary and sufficient condition under which the remote state estimator is stable. It is shown that the estimation stability only depends on the high-energy packet reception ratio and the spectral radius of the system dynamic matrix.     

Global optimal solutions to general sensor network localization problem

Sensor network localization problem is to determine the position of the sensor nodes in a network given pairwise distance measurements. Such problem can be formulated as a quartic polynomial minimization via the least squares method. This paper presents a canonical duality theory for solving this challenging problem. It is shown that the nonconvex minimization problem can be reformulated as a concave maximization dual problem over a convex set in a symmetrical matrix space, and hence can be solved efficiently by combining a general (linear or quadratic) perturbation technique with existing optimization techniques. Applications are illustrated by solving some relatively large-scale problems. Our results show that the general sensor network localization problem is not NP-hard unless its canonical dual problem has no solution in its positive definite domain. Fundamental ideas for solving general NP-hard problems are discussed.     

A new lower bound for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with generalized precedence relations

In this paper we propose a new lower bound for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with generalized precedence relationships. The lower bound is based on a relaxation of the resource constraints among independent activities and on a solution of the relaxed problem suitably represented by means of an AON acyclic network. Computational results are presented and confirmed a better practical performance of the proposed method with respect to those present in the literature.     

Arcs-states models for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and related problems

This paper presents several Arcs-States models that can be applied to numerous vehicle routing problems, one of which is the well-known vehicle routing problem with capacities and time windows. In these models, the variables correspond to the states (i.e. the resource quantities) of the vehicles when they travel through an arc. The LP relaxation of the problem provides a lower bound that can be embedded in a branch and bound algorithm that solves the problem exactly. However, for the pseudo-polynomial number of variables and constraints of our models, column and row generations have to be used. Generally, in a branch and bound algorithm, the lower bound needs to be very efficient to minimize the size of the branch and bound trees as far as possible. One of the models we present, the time-only, relies on a relaxation of the Arcs-States model where a resource is removed from the states in the variables. Although the quality of the bounds decreases, the global resolution time is greatly improved, as illustrated on instances of Solomon's benchmark.     

Generating subproblems in branch and bound algorithms for parallel machines scheduling problem

A branch and bound algorithm (B&B) has been widely used in various discrete and combinatorial optimization fields. To obtain optimal solutions as soon as possible for scheduling problems, three tools, which are branching, bounding and dominance rules, have been developed in the B&B algorithm. One of these tools, a branching is a method for generating subproblems and directly determines size of solution to be searched in the B&B algorithm. Therefore, it is very important to devise effective branching scheme for the problem.In this note, a survey of branching schemes is performed for parallel machines scheduling (PMS) problems with n independent jobs and m machines and new branching schemes that can be used for identical and unrelated PMS problems, respectively, are suggested. The suggested branching methods show that numbers of generated subproblems are much smaller than that of other methods developed earlier and therefore, it is expected that they help to reduce a lot of CPU time required to obtain optimal solutions in the B&B algorithm.     

Minimizing total completion time for re-entrant flow shop scheduling problems

In this paper, we study re-entrant flow shop scheduling problems with the objective of minimizing total completion time. In a re-entrant scheduling problem, jobs may visit some machines more than once for processing. The problem is NP-hard even for machine number m=2. A heuristic algorithm is presented to solve the problem, in which an effective k-insertion technique is introduced as the improvement strategy in iterations. Computational experiments and analyses are performed to give guidelines of choosing parameters in the algorithm. We also provide a lower bound for the total completion time of the optimal solution when there are only two machines. Objective function values of the heuristic solutions are compared with the lower bounds to evaluate the efficiency of the algorithm. For randomly generated instances, the results show that the given heuristic algorithm generates solutions with total completion times within 1.2 times of the lower bounds in most of the cases.     

Two-machine robotic cell scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times

In this paper, we introduce a new and practical two-machine robotic cell scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times (2RCSDST) along with different loading/unloading times for each part. Our objective is to simultaneously determine the sequence of robot moves and the sequence of parts that minimize the total cycle time. The proposed problem is proven to be strongly NP-hard. Using the Gilmore and Gomory (GnG) algorithm, a polynomial-time computable lower bound is provided.     

Decomposition based heuristic algorithm for lot-sizing and scheduling problem treating time horizon as a continuum

In this paper, we deal with a new lot-sizing and scheduling problem (LSSP) that minimizes the sum of production cost, setup cost, and inventory cost. Incorporating the constraints of setup carry-over and overlapping as well as demand splitting, we develop a mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation. In the formulation, problem size does not increase as we enhance the precision level of a time period; for example, by dividing a time period into a number of microtime periods. Accordingly, in the proposed model, we treat the time horizon as a continuum not as a collection of discrete time periods. Since the problem is theoretically intractable, we develop a simple but efficient heuristic algorithm by devising a decomposition scheme coupled with a local search procedure. Even if in theory the heuristic may not guarantee finding a feasible solution, computational results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is a viable choice in practice for finding good quality feasible solutions within acceptable time limit.     

Optimizing blocking flow shop scheduling problem with total completion time criterion

The blocking flow shop scheduling problem has found many applications in manufacturing systems. There are a few exact methods for solving this problem with different criteria. In this paper, efforts will be made to optimize the total completion time criterion for this problem. We present two mixed binary integer programming models, one of which is based on the departure times of jobs from machines, and the other is based on the idle and blocking times of jobs. An initial upper bound generator and some lower bounds and dominance rules are also developed to be used in a branch and bound algorithm. The algorithm solves 17 instances of the Taillard's benchmark problem set in less than 20 min.     

基于无线传感器网络的分布式时分多址调度策略

针对周期汇报型无线传感器网络(WSN)中数据量大而导致的无线信号冲突概率高的问题,提出了一种分布式的时分多址调度策略(DTSS)。该策略采用了一种分布式的竞争算法来构建节点的时隙调度表,即每个节点根据自身搜集到的信息来决定下一跳目的节点,并和其他节点竞争传输时隙。所有节点完成时隙调度表的建立后,节点在每个数据采集周期根据自己的工作时隙调度表发送和接收数据。仿真结果表明,该策略避免了节点无线信号的冲突,降低了节点能耗,延长了网络生命周期。     

Generalized disjunctive constraint propagation for solving the job shop problem with time lags

This paper addresses the job-shop scheduling problem with time-lags. We propose an insertion heuristic and generalized resource constraint propagation mechanisms. Our propositions are embedded in a branch-and-bound algorithm to provide an experimental evaluation on some benchmark instances. The results obtained conclude that our heuristic achieves the best solutions on the instances, especially when problems involve tightened time lags. The results also prove the interest of the constraint propagation generalization when time lags are considered.