APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR TEMPLATE-BASED SCHEDULING PROCESSES USING REGULARITY MEASURE LOWER BOUNDS

摘要

An advantageous scheduling template slot ordering for use in establishing ascheduling order of events such as transmitting communication signals in acommunication network is determined by assigning at least two initial slotpositions to a particular signal class and then determining a regularity measurebased on a lower bound for the regularity measure of such assignments and theremaining unassigned slot positions. This lower bound for the regularitymeasure of the unassigned slots is advantageously based on a hypotheticalassignment of fractions of the slot positions to different signal classes instead oflimiting the assignment of a slot to a single signal class. This fractional slotassignment produces a regularity measure that is better than or equal to acorresponding regularity measure based on assigning a whole slot to a particularsignal class. The lower bound of the regularity measure is then compared witha threshold regularity measure, such as from a known reference schedulingtemplate. If the threshold regularity measure is lower than the determinedlower bound, then it is known that the reference template would provide a moredesirable regularity of events than any template having the assigned slotpositions to that particular signal class. As a consequence, other slotassignments can be compared to the reference template to rapidly identifyscheduling templates with enhanced regularity characteristics.