23 research outputs found
A 5-Approximation for Universal Facility Location
In this paper, we propose and analyze a local search algorithm for the Universal facility location problem. Our algorithm improves the approximation ratio of this problem from 5.83, given by Angel et al., to 5. A second major contribution of the paper is that it gets rid of the expensive multi operation that was a mainstay of all previous local search algorithms for capacitated facility location and universal facility location problem. The only operations that we require to prove the 5-approximation are add, open, and close. A multi operation is basically a combination of the open and close operations. The 5-approximation algorithm for the capacitated facility location problem, given by Bansal et al., also uses the multi operation. However, on careful observation, it turned out that add, open, and close operations are sufficient to prove a 5-factor for the problem. This resulted into an improved algorithm for the universal facility location problem, with an improved factor
Online Mixed Packing and Covering
In many problems, the inputs arrive over time, and must be dealt with
irrevocably when they arrive. Such problems are online problems. A common
method of solving online problems is to first solve the corresponding linear
program, and then round the fractional solution online to obtain an integral
solution.
We give algorithms for solving linear programs with mixed packing and
covering constraints online. We first consider mixed packing and covering
linear programs, where packing constraints are given offline and covering
constraints are received online. The objective is to minimize the maximum
multiplicative factor by which any packing constraint is violated, while
satisfying the covering constraints. No prior sublinear competitive algorithms
are known for this problem. We give the first such --- a
polylogarithmic-competitive algorithm for solving mixed packing and covering
linear programs online. We also show a nearly tight lower bound.
Our techniques for the upper bound use an exponential penalty function in
conjunction with multiplicative updates. While exponential penalty functions
are used previously to solve linear programs offline approximately, offline
algorithms know the constraints beforehand and can optimize greedily. In
contrast, when constraints arrive online, updates need to be more complex.
We apply our techniques to solve two online fixed-charge problems with
congestion. These problems are motivated by applications in machine scheduling
and facility location. The linear program for these problems is more
complicated than mixed packing and covering, and presents unique challenges. We
show that our techniques combined with a randomized rounding procedure give
polylogarithmic-competitive integral solutions. These problems generalize
online set-cover, for which there is a polylogarithmic lower bound. Hence, our
results are close to tight