A Backpressure-Based Algorithm for Optimal Scheduling in Freight Management Systems

In this work, we present a novel, backpressure-based algorithm for optimal scheduling in freight management (logistics) systems. Although scheduling has been extensively addressed within the logistics domain, there are various remaining open challenges regarding scalability, stability, and quality of transfer requirements. We provide an alternative approach for logistics systems, which capitalizes on the principles of back-pressure scheduling, originally proposed for joint packet routing and scheduling in computer and communication networks. Our penultimate goal is to develop a broader framework addressing all the previously mentioned open challenges. We present a first, simple, functional instance of this framework through a specific algorithm addressing mainly the issues of scalability of scheduling and stability of the whole system, ensuring that the system load will not cause an explosion of the unsent backlog at any time. Additionally, we provide simulation results on its performance, demonstrating its potentials, and thus paving the way for a broader exploitation that enables optimal routing-scheduling decisions in logistics systems.