English

Pinwheel Scheduling with Real Periods

Discrete Mathematics 2026-03-03 v4 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

For a sequence of tasks, each with a positive integer period, the pinwheel scheduling problem involves finding a valid schedule in the sense that the schedule performs one task per day and each task is performed at least once every consecutive days of its period. It had been conjectured by Chan and Chin in 1993 that there exists a valid schedule for any sequence of tasks with density, the sum of the reciprocals of each period, at most 56\frac{5}{6}. Recently, Kawamura settled this conjecture affirmatively. In this paper we consider an extended version with real periods proposed by Kawamura, in which a valid schedule must perform each task ii having a real period~aia_{i} at least ll times in any lai\lceil l a_{i} \rceil consecutive days for all positive integer ll. We show that any sequence of tasks such that the periods take three distinct real values and the density is at most 56\frac{5}{6} admits a valid schedule. We hereby conjecture that the conjecture of Chan and Chin is true also for real periods.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.24068,
  title  = {Pinwheel Scheduling with Real Periods},
  author = {Hiroshi Fujiwara and Kota Miyagi and Katsuhisa Ouchi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.24068},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:08:58.661Z