2,214 research outputs found
A Constant-Factor Approximation for Directed Latency in Quasi-Polynomial Time
We give the first constant-factor approximation for the Directed Latency
problem in quasi-polynomial time. Here, the goal is to visit all nodes in an
asymmetric metric with a single vehicle starting at a depot to minimize the
average time a node waits to be visited by the vehicle. The approximation
guarantee is an improvement over the polynomial-time -approximation
[Friggstad, Salavatipour, Svitkina, 2013] and no better quasi-polynomial time
approximation algorithm was known.
To obtain this, we must extend a recent result showing the integrality gap of
the Asymmetric TSP-Path LP relaxation is bounded by a constant [K\"{o}hne,
Traub, and Vygen, 2019], which itself builds on the breakthrough result that
the integrality gap for standard Asymmetric TSP is also a constant [Svensson,
Tarnawsi, and Vegh, 2018]. We show the standard Asymmetric TSP-Path integrality
gap is bounded by a constant even if the cut requirements of the LP relaxation
are relaxed from to
for some constant . We also give a better approximation
guarantee in the special case of Directed Latency in regret metrics where the
goal is to find a path minimize the average time a node waits in excess
of , i.e.
Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Path and Directed Latency Problems
We study integrality gaps and approximability of two closely related problems
on directed graphs. Given a set V of n nodes in an underlying asymmetric metric
and two specified nodes s and t, both problems ask to find an s-t path visiting
all other nodes. In the asymmetric traveling salesman path problem (ATSPP), the
objective is to minimize the total cost of this path. In the directed latency
problem, the objective is to minimize the sum of distances on this path from s
to each node. Both of these problems are NP-hard. The best known approximation
algorithms for ATSPP had ratio O(log n) until the very recent result that
improves it to O(log n/ log log n). However, only a bound of O(sqrt(n)) for the
integrality gap of its linear programming relaxation has been known. For
directed latency, the best previously known approximation algorithm has a
guarantee of O(n^(1/2+eps)), for any constant eps > 0. We present a new
algorithm for the ATSPP problem that has an approximation ratio of O(log n),
but whose analysis also bounds the integrality gap of the standard LP
relaxation of ATSPP by the same factor. This solves an open problem posed by
Chekuri and Pal [2007]. We then pursue a deeper study of this linear program
and its variations, which leads to an algorithm for the k-person ATSPP (where k
s-t paths of minimum total length are sought) and an O(log n)-approximation for
the directed latency problem
Constant-Factor Approximation to Deadline TSP and Related Problems in (Almost) Quasi-Polytime
We investigate a genre of vehicle-routing problems (VRPs), that we call max-reward VRPs, wherein nodes located in a metric space have associated rewards that depend on their visiting times, and we seek a path that earns maximum reward. A prominent problem in this genre is deadline TSP, where nodes have deadlines and we seek a path that visits all nodes by their deadlines and earns maximum reward. Our main result is a constant-factor approximation for deadline TSP running in time O(n^O(log(n?))) in metric spaces with integer distances at most ?. This is the first improvement over the approximation factor of O(log n) due to Bansal et al. [N. Bansal et al., 2004] in over 15 years (but is achieved in super-polynomial time). Our result provides the first concrete indication that log n is unlikely to be a real inapproximability barrier for deadline TSP, and raises the exciting possibility that deadline TSP might admit a polytime constant-factor approximation.
At a high level, we obtain our result by carefully guessing an appropriate sequence of O(log (n?)) nodes appearing on the optimal path, and finding suitable paths between any two consecutive guessed nodes. We argue that the problem of finding a path between two consecutive guessed nodes can be relaxed to an instance of a special case of deadline TSP called point-to-point (P2P) orienteering. Any approximation algorithm for P2P orienteering can then be utilized in conjunction with either a greedy approach, or an LP-rounding approach, to find a good set of paths overall between every pair of guessed nodes. While concatenating these paths does not immediately yield a feasible solution, we argue that it can be covered by a constant number of feasible solutions. Overall our result therefore provides a novel reduction showing that any ?-approximation for P2P orienteering can be leveraged to obtain an O(?)-approximation for deadline TSP in O(n^O(log n?)) time.
Our results extend to yield the same guarantees (in approximation ratio and running time) for a substantial generalization of deadline TSP, where the reward obtained by a client is given by an arbitrary non-increasing function (specified by a value oracle) of its visiting time. Finally, we discuss applications of our results to variants of deadline TSP, including settings where both end-nodes are specified, nodes have release dates, and orienteering with time windows
Minimum Latency Submodular Cover
We study the Minimum Latency Submodular Cover problem (MLSC), which consists
of a metric with source and monotone submodular functions
. The goal is to find a path
originating at that minimizes the total cover time of all functions. This
generalizes well-studied problems, such as Submodular Ranking [AzarG11] and
Group Steiner Tree [GKR00]. We give a polynomial time O(\log \frac{1}{\eps}
\cdot \log^{2+\delta} |V|)-approximation algorithm for MLSC, where
is the smallest non-zero marginal increase of any
and is any constant.
We also consider the Latency Covering Steiner Tree problem (LCST), which is
the special case of \mlsc where the s are multi-coverage functions. This
is a common generalization of the Latency Group Steiner Tree
[GuptaNR10a,ChakrabartyS11] and Generalized Min-sum Set Cover [AzarGY09,
BansalGK10] problems. We obtain an -approximation algorithm for
LCST.
Finally we study a natural stochastic extension of the Submodular Ranking
problem, and obtain an adaptive algorithm with an O(\log 1/ \eps)
approximation ratio, which is best possible. This result also generalizes some
previously studied stochastic optimization problems, such as Stochastic Set
Cover [GoemansV06] and Shared Filter Evaluation [MunagalaSW07, LiuPRY08].Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur
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