7,221 research outputs found
Improved Approximation Algorithms for Steiner Connectivity Augmentation Problems
The Weighted Connectivity Augmentation Problem is the problem of augmenting
the edge-connectivity of a given graph by adding links of minimum total cost.
This work focuses on connectivity augmentation problems in the Steiner setting,
where we are not interested in the connectivity between all nodes of the graph,
but only the connectivity between a specified subset of terminals.
We consider two related settings. In the Steiner Augmentation of a Graph
problem (-SAG), we are given a -edge-connected subgraph of a graph
. The goal is to augment by including links and nodes from of
minimum cost so that the edge-connectivity between nodes of increases by 1.
In the Steiner Connectivity Augmentation Problem (-SCAP), we are given a
Steiner -edge-connected graph connecting terminals , and we seek to add
links of minimum cost to create a Steiner -edge-connected graph for .
Note that -SAG is a special case of -SCAP.
All of the above problems can be approximated to within a factor of 2 using
e.g. Jain's iterative rounding algorithm for Survivable Network Design. In this
work, we leverage the framework of Traub and Zenklusen to give a -approximation for the Steiner Ring Augmentation Problem (SRAP):
given a cycle embedded in a larger graph and
a subset of terminals , choose a subset of links of minimum cost so that has 3 pairwise edge-disjoint paths
between every pair of terminals.
We show this yields a polynomial time algorithm with approximation ratio for -SCAP. We obtain an improved approximation
guarantee of for SRAP in the case that , which
yields a -approximation for -SAG for any
Approximating the minimum directed tree cover
Given a directed graph with non negative cost on the arcs, a directed
tree cover of is a rooted directed tree such that either head or tail (or
both of them) of every arc in is touched by . The minimum directed tree
cover problem (DTCP) is to find a directed tree cover of minimum cost. The
problem is known to be -hard. In this paper, we show that the weighted Set
Cover Problem (SCP) is a special case of DTCP. Hence, one can expect at best to
approximate DTCP with the same ratio as for SCP. We show that this expectation
can be satisfied in some way by designing a purely combinatorial approximation
algorithm for the DTCP and proving that the approximation ratio of the
algorithm is with is the maximum outgoing degree of
the nodes in .Comment: 13 page
Approximation Algorithms for Union and Intersection Covering Problems
In a classical covering problem, we are given a set of requests that we need
to satisfy (fully or partially), by buying a subset of items at minimum cost.
For example, in the k-MST problem we want to find the cheapest tree spanning at
least k nodes of an edge-weighted graph. Here nodes and edges represent
requests and items, respectively.
In this paper, we initiate the study of a new family of multi-layer covering
problems. Each such problem consists of a collection of h distinct instances of
a standard covering problem (layers), with the constraint that all layers share
the same set of requests. We identify two main subfamilies of these problems: -
in a union multi-layer problem, a request is satisfied if it is satisfied in at
least one layer; - in an intersection multi-layer problem, a request is
satisfied if it is satisfied in all layers. To see some natural applications,
consider both generalizations of k-MST. Union k-MST can model a problem where
we are asked to connect a set of users to at least one of two communication
networks, e.g., a wireless and a wired network. On the other hand, intersection
k-MST can formalize the problem of connecting a subset of users to both
electricity and water.
We present a number of hardness and approximation results for union and
intersection versions of several standard optimization problems: MST, Steiner
tree, set cover, facility location, TSP, and their partial covering variants
Approximating Minimum-Cost k-Node Connected Subgraphs via Independence-Free Graphs
We present a 6-approximation algorithm for the minimum-cost -node
connected spanning subgraph problem, assuming that the number of nodes is at
least . We apply a combinatorial preprocessing, based on the
Frank-Tardos algorithm for -outconnectivity, to transform any input into an
instance such that the iterative rounding method gives a 2-approximation
guarantee. This is the first constant-factor approximation algorithm even in
the asymptotic setting of the problem, that is, the restriction to instances
where the number of nodes is lower bounded by a function of .Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure, 28 reference
Approximating subset -connectivity problems
A subset of terminals is -connected to a root in a
directed/undirected graph if has internally-disjoint -paths for
every ; is -connected in if is -connected to every
. We consider the {\sf Subset -Connectivity Augmentation} problem:
given a graph with edge/node-costs, node subset , and
a subgraph of such that is -connected in , find a
minimum-cost augmenting edge-set such that is
-connected in . The problem admits trivial ratio .
We consider the case and prove that for directed/undirected graphs and
edge/node-costs, a -approximation for {\sf Rooted Subset -Connectivity
Augmentation} implies the following ratios for {\sf Subset -Connectivity
Augmentation}: (i) ; (ii) , where
b=1 for undirected graphs and b=2 for directed graphs, and is the th
harmonic number. The best known values of on undirected graphs are
for edge-costs and for
node-costs; for directed graphs for both versions. Our results imply
that unless , {\sf Subset -Connectivity Augmentation} admits
the same ratios as the best known ones for the rooted version. This improves
the ratios in \cite{N-focs,L}
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