3,651 research outputs found
Approximating the Held-Karp Bound for Metric TSP in Nearly Linear Time
We give a nearly linear time randomized approximation scheme for the
Held-Karp bound [Held and Karp, 1970] for metric TSP. Formally, given an
undirected edge-weighted graph on edges and , the
algorithm outputs in time, with high probability, a
-approximation to the Held-Karp bound on the metric TSP instance
induced by the shortest path metric on . The algorithm can also be used to
output a corresponding solution to the Subtour Elimination LP. We substantially
improve upon the running time achieved previously
by Garg and Khandekar. The LP solution can be used to obtain a fast randomized
-approximation for metric TSP which improves
upon the running time of previous implementations of Christofides' algorithm
Maximum weight cycle packing in directed graphs, with application to kidney exchange programs
Centralized matching programs have been established in several countries to organize kidney exchanges between incompatible patient-donor pairs. At the heart of these programs are algorithms to solve kidney exchange problems, which can be modelled as cycle packing problems in a directed graph, involving cycles of length 2, 3, or even longer. Usually, the goal is to maximize the number of transplants, but sometimes the total benefit is maximized by considering the differences between suitable kidneys. These problems correspond to computing cycle packings of maximum size or maximum weight in directed graphs. Here we prove the APX-completeness of the problem of finding a maximum size exchange involving only 2-cycles and 3-cycles. We also present an approximation algorithm and an exact algorithm for the problem of finding a maximum weight exchange involving cycles of bounded length. The exact algorithm has been used to provide optimal solutions to real kidney exchange problems arising from the National Matching Scheme for Paired Donation run by NHS Blood and Transplant, and we describe practical experience based on this collaboration
Squarepants in a Tree: Sum of Subtree Clustering and Hyperbolic Pants Decomposition
We provide efficient constant factor approximation algorithms for the
problems of finding a hierarchical clustering of a point set in any metric
space, minimizing the sum of minimimum spanning tree lengths within each
cluster, and in the hyperbolic or Euclidean planes, minimizing the sum of
cluster perimeters. Our algorithms for the hyperbolic and Euclidean planes can
also be used to provide a pants decomposition, that is, a set of disjoint
simple closed curves partitioning the plane minus the input points into subsets
with exactly three boundary components, with approximately minimum total
length. In the Euclidean case, these curves are squares; in the hyperbolic
case, they combine our Euclidean square pants decomposition with our tree
clustering method for general metric spaces.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures. This version replaces the proof of what is now
Lemma 5.2, as the previous proof was erroneou
Walking Through Waypoints
We initiate the study of a fundamental combinatorial problem: Given a
capacitated graph , find a shortest walk ("route") from a source to a destination that includes all vertices specified by a set
: the \emph{waypoints}. This waypoint routing problem
finds immediate applications in the context of modern networked distributed
systems. Our main contribution is an exact polynomial-time algorithm for graphs
of bounded treewidth. We also show that if the number of waypoints is
logarithmically bounded, exact polynomial-time algorithms exist even for
general graphs. Our two algorithms provide an almost complete characterization
of what can be solved exactly in polynomial-time: we show that more general
problems (e.g., on grid graphs of maximum degree 3, with slightly more
waypoints) are computationally intractable
Lossy Kernelization
In this paper we propose a new framework for analyzing the performance of
preprocessing algorithms. Our framework builds on the notion of kernelization
from parameterized complexity. However, as opposed to the original notion of
kernelization, our definitions combine well with approximation algorithms and
heuristics. The key new definition is that of a polynomial size
-approximate kernel. Loosely speaking, a polynomial size
-approximate kernel is a polynomial time pre-processing algorithm that
takes as input an instance to a parameterized problem, and outputs
another instance to the same problem, such that . Additionally, for every , a -approximate solution
to the pre-processed instance can be turned in polynomial time into a
-approximate solution to the original instance .
Our main technical contribution are -approximate kernels of
polynomial size for three problems, namely Connected Vertex Cover, Disjoint
Cycle Packing and Disjoint Factors. These problems are known not to admit any
polynomial size kernels unless . Our approximate
kernels simultaneously beat both the lower bounds on the (normal) kernel size,
and the hardness of approximation lower bounds for all three problems. On the
negative side we prove that Longest Path parameterized by the length of the
path and Set Cover parameterized by the universe size do not admit even an
-approximate kernel of polynomial size, for any , unless
. In order to prove this lower bound we need to combine
in a non-trivial way the techniques used for showing kernelization lower bounds
with the methods for showing hardness of approximationComment: 58 pages. Version 2 contain new results: PSAKS for Cycle Packing and
approximate kernel lower bounds for Set Cover and Hitting Set parameterized
by universe siz
Distributed Connectivity Decomposition
We present time-efficient distributed algorithms for decomposing graphs with
large edge or vertex connectivity into multiple spanning or dominating trees,
respectively. As their primary applications, these decompositions allow us to
achieve information flow with size close to the connectivity by parallelizing
it along the trees. More specifically, our distributed decomposition algorithms
are as follows:
(I) A decomposition of each undirected graph with vertex-connectivity
into (fractionally) vertex-disjoint weighted dominating trees with total weight
, in rounds.
(II) A decomposition of each undirected graph with edge-connectivity
into (fractionally) edge-disjoint weighted spanning trees with total
weight , in
rounds.
We also show round complexity lower bounds of
and
for the above two decompositions,
using techniques of [Das Sarma et al., STOC'11]. Moreover, our
vertex-connectivity decomposition extends to centralized algorithms and
improves the time complexity of [Censor-Hillel et al., SODA'14] from
to near-optimal .
As corollaries, we also get distributed oblivious routing broadcast with
-competitive edge-congestion and -competitive
vertex-congestion. Furthermore, the vertex connectivity decomposition leads to
near-time-optimal -approximation of vertex connectivity: centralized
and distributed . The former moves
toward the 1974 conjecture of Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman postulating an
centralized exact algorithm while the latter is the first distributed vertex
connectivity approximation
General Bounds for Incremental Maximization
We propose a theoretical framework to capture incremental solutions to
cardinality constrained maximization problems. The defining characteristic of
our framework is that the cardinality/support of the solution is bounded by a
value that grows over time, and we allow the solution to be
extended one element at a time. We investigate the best-possible competitive
ratio of such an incremental solution, i.e., the worst ratio over all
between the incremental solution after steps and an optimum solution of
cardinality . We define a large class of problems that contains many
important cardinality constrained maximization problems like maximum matching,
knapsack, and packing/covering problems. We provide a general
-competitive incremental algorithm for this class of problems, and show
that no algorithm can have competitive ratio below in general.
In the second part of the paper, we focus on the inherently incremental
greedy algorithm that increases the objective value as much as possible in each
step. This algorithm is known to be -competitive for submodular objective
functions, but it has unbounded competitive ratio for the class of incremental
problems mentioned above. We define a relaxed submodularity condition for the
objective function, capturing problems like maximum (weighted) (-)matching
and a variant of the maximum flow problem. We show that the greedy algorithm
has competitive ratio (exactly) for the class of problems that satisfy
this relaxed submodularity condition.
Note that our upper bounds on the competitive ratios translate to
approximation ratios for the underlying cardinality constrained problems.Comment: fixed typo
Efficient Approximation Algorithms for Multi-Antennae Largest Weight Data Retrieval
In a mobile network, wireless data broadcast over channels (frequencies)
is a powerful means for distributed dissemination of data to clients who access
the channels through multi-antennae equipped on their mobile devices. The
-antennae largest weight data retrieval (ALWDR) problem is to
compute a schedule for downloading a subset of data items that has a maximum
total weight using antennae in a given time interval. In this paper,
we propose a ratio approximation algorithm for the
-antennae largest weight data retrieval (ALWDR) problem that
has the same ratio as the known result but a significantly improved time
complexity of from
when
\cite{lu2014data}. To our knowledge, our algorithm represents the first ratio
approximation solution to ALWDR for the
general case of arbitrary . To achieve this, we first give a ratio
algorithm for the -separated ALWDR
(ALWDR) with runtime , under the assumption
that every data item appears at most once in each segment of
ALWDR, for any input of maximum length on channels in
time slots. Then, we show that we can retain the same ratio for
ALWDR without this assumption at the cost of increased time
complexity to . This result immediately yields an
approximation solution of same ratio and time complexity for ALWDR,
presenting a significant improvement of the known time complexity of ratio
approximation to the problem
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