New Complexity Results for Fair Repetitive Scheduling

Abstract: We revisit the problem of finding fair solutions to repetitive scheduling problems with a single machine. In this problem, we are given a set of $n$ clients and a planning horizon consisting of $q$ periods (days). Each day, every client submits a single job that must be processed by the machine. The objective is to construct a set of $q$ schedules, one for each day, such that the quality of service (QoS) received by each client meets a predefined threshold. The QoS measure may be any standard scheduling criterion, such as the total waiting time or total completion time of a client's jobs over the entire planning horizon. This problem has been studied in the literature, with previous works providing complexity classifications and approximation algorithms for various QoS measures. Nevertheless, several important questions remain open. In this paper, we resolve three of these questions and identify several additional directions for future research.