Minimum-Delay Beam Scheduling Leveraging Reflections for Switched Beamforming Systems

We address the minimum-delay beam scheduling problem leveraging reflections for switched beamforming systems. The objective is to efficiently disseminate a data file from a transmitter to a set of nodes via multiple predetermined beams with arbitrary overlapping patterns. The problem is formulated as a challenging mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) and then decomposed into a set of subproblems. The subproblems are still difficult to solve due to their NP-hardness. We propose a heuristic algorithm for the subproblems, based on which two heuristic algorithms with different computational complexities are developed for the original problem. Simulation results high-light the significant reduction in dissemination delay achieved by the proposed algorithms compared to baseline approaches without leveraging reflections.