Scheduling System for Remote Control of Instruments used for Atmospheric Observation

In this poster contribution, we present a scheduling system for automated remote operation of instruments at high-altitude research facilities and similar remote sites. Via web-based interfaces, the system allows instrument owners as well as authorized third-party scientists to schedule and execute measurements and observations.

The system has been developed as a thesis project in the context of the AlpEnDAC-II ("Alpine Environmental Data Analysis Centre", www.alpendac.eu) collaboration (funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection). Consequently, the scheduler and interfaces have been integrated with the AlpEnDAC Operating-on-Demand functionalities. A first use case for the framework has been the operation of an airglow imager (FAIM) in Oberpfaffenhofen (DE).

We describe the design and implementation of our system for scheduling and execution of multi-user observations on instruments, including scheduling-data transfers and data retrieval. Our core implementation uses an optimization-based scheduler (Google's OR-Tools) to ensure maximum instrument use and to minimize idle times. Results show that the scheduler is reliable, fast, and is consistently able to provide optimal observation plans. The extensibility of the system is guaranteed by the usage of modern software in the core of the system, including well-defined and specified communication through REST APIs. Thus, it can easily be adapted to other settings and instruments, which is also facilitated by a modern deployment strategy using Docker and Kubernetes.