This work examines a strongly NP-hard routing problem on trees, in which multiple servers need to serve a given set of requests (on vertices), where the routes of the servers start from a common source and end at their respective terminals. Each server can travel free of cost on its source-to-terminal path but has to pay for travel on other edges. The objective is to minimize the maximum cost over all servers. As the servers may pay different costs for traveling through a common edge, balancing the loads of the servers can be difficult. We propose a polynomial-time 4-approximation algorithm that applies the parametric pruning framework but consists of two phases. The first phase of the algorithm partitions the requests into packets, and the second phase of the algorithm assigns the packets to the servers. Unlike the standard parametric pruning techniques, the challenge of our algorithm design and analysis is to harmoniously relate the quality of the partition in the first phase, the balances of the servers' loads in the second phase, and the hypothetical optimal values of the framework. For the problem in general graphs, we show that there is no algorithm better than 2-approximate unless P = NP. The problem is a generalization of unrelated machine scheduling and other classic scheduling problems. It also models scheduling problems where the job processing times depend on the machine serving the job and the other jobs served by that machine. This modeling provides a framework that physicalizes scheduling problems through the graph’s point of view.

We study a scheduling problem arising in demand response management in smart grid. Consumers send in power requests with a flexible feasible time interval during which their requests can be served. The grid controller, upon receiving power requests, schedules each request within the specified interval. The electricity cost is measured by a convex function of the load in each timeslot. The objective is to schedule all requests with the minimum total electricity cost. Previous work has studied cases where jobs have unit power requirement and unit duration. We extend the study to arbitrary power requirement and duration, which has been shown to be NP-hard. We give the first online algorithm for the general problem, and prove that the worst case competitive ratio is asymptotically optimal. We also prove that the problem is fixed parameter tractable. Due to space limit, the missing proofs are presented in the full paper.