Scheduling to Maximize Weighted Throughput with an Active-Time Budget

Abstract

We study the active-time scheduling problem with weighted throughput maximization. In this setting, a set of $n$ jobs $J$ arrive at integer release times, each with an integer processing time and integer deadline. Jobs may be preempted at integer time slot boundaries. A schedule assigns jobs to time slots, with at most $m$ jobs assigned to the same time slot. A slot is called \emph{active} if at least one job is scheduled in it. Instead of scheduling all jobs to minimize the number of active time slots, we consider the more general variant of \emph{weighted throughput} with an active-time budget $K$, where each job $j\in J$ has a weight $w_j$. The objective is to maximize the total weight of \emph{completed} jobs using at most $K$ active time slots. This means that partially scheduled jobs do not count towards the objective. The classical active-time minimization problem is recovered by asking whether all jobs can be completed within a given active-time budget. We give hardness, approximation, and exact algorithmic results. For general intervals with unbounded parallelism, we prove NP-hardness, rule out an FPTAS unless $\mathrm{P}=\mathrm{NP}$, and give a pseudo-polynomial time $\Omega (1/\log K)$-approximation. For proper intervals, we prove a canonical structural lemma and obtain an exact $(nK{)}^{O(m)}$-time algorithm. For laminar intervals, we give an exact $f(K,m)\cdot n^{O(1)}$-time algorithm.

16 pages, 5 figures, To appear at WAOA 2026