Scheduling Optimization with Virtual Task for Radar Resource Management

This paper proposes a new method for optimizing radar task scheduling, which is built upon the assistance of zeropriority virtual tasks. Specifically designed for under-loaded radar situations, the method initially generates several virtual tasks (VTs) without any assigned priorities. These VTs, along with the original real tasks, are then fed into the Random-Shifted-Start-Time (RSST) radar scheduler for scheduling. The VTs are strategically placed as temporal spacers among real tasks to minimize their unwanted shifts. RSST process is iterated multiple times to obtain an optimized task schedule with reduced cost. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the schedule determined by the proposed method is up to 20 times less costly than that derived from the traditional Earliest-Start-Time (EST) algorithm, or 8 times less than the schedule when using the RSST algorithm alone, under certain loading conditions. With the computational time maintained below 5 milliseconds, the proposed method is both efficient and practical for real-time radar missions.