On Generalizations of Network Design Problems with Degree Bounds

Iterative rounding and relaxation have arguably become the method of choice in dealing with unconstrained and constrained network design problems. In this paper we extend the scope of the iterative relaxation method in two directions: (1) by handling more complex degree constraints in the minimum spanning tree problem (namely, laminar crossing spanning tree), and (2) by incorporating `degree bounds' in other combinatorial optimization problems such as matroid intersection and lattice polyhedra. We give new or improved approximation algorithms, hardness results, and integrality gaps for these problems.Comment: v2, 24 pages, 4 figure

Packing Cars into Narrow Roads: PTASs for Limited Supply Highway

In the Highway problem, we are given a path with n edges (the highway), and a set of m drivers, each one characterized by a subpath and a budget. For a given assignment of edge prices (the tolls), the highway owner collects from each driver the total price of the associated path when it does not exceed drivers\u27s budget, and zero otherwise. The goal is to choose the prices to maximize the total profit. A PTAS is known for this (strongly NP-hard) problem [Grandoni,Rothvoss-SODA\u2711, SICOMP\u2716]. In this paper we study the limited supply generalization of Highway, that incorporates capacity constraints. Here the input also includes a capacity u_e >= 0 for each edge e; we need to select, among drivers that can afford the required price, a subset such that the number of drivers that use each edge e is at most u_e (and we get profit only from selected drivers). To the best of our knowledge, the only approximation algorithm known for this problem is a folklore O(log m) approximation based on a reduction to the related Unsplittable Flow on a Path problem (UFP). The main result of this paper is a PTAS for limited supply highway. As a second contribution, we study a natural generalization of the problem where each driver i demands a different amount d_i of capacity. Using known techniques, it is not hard to derive a QPTAS for this problem. Here we present a PTAS for the case that drivers have uniform budgets. Finding a PTAS for non-uniform-demand limited supply highway is left as a challenging open problem

On green routing and scheduling problem

The vehicle routing and scheduling problem has been studied with much interest within the last four decades. In this paper, some of the existing literature dealing with routing and scheduling problems with environmental issues is reviewed, and a description is provided of the problems that have been investigated and how they are treated using combinatorial optimization tools