68,501 research outputs found
Lagrangian Relaxation and Partial Cover (Extended Abstract)
Lagrangian relaxation has been used extensively in the design of
approximation algorithms. This paper studies its strengths and
limitations when applied to Partial Cover.
We show that for Partial Cover in general no algorithm that uses
Lagrangian relaxation and a Lagrangian Multiplier Preserving (LMP)
-approximation as a black box can yield an approximation
factor better than~. This matches the upper bound
given by K"onemann et al. (ESA 2006, pages
468--479).
Faced with this limitation we study a specific, yet broad class of
covering problems: Partial Totally Balanced Cover. By carefully
analyzing the inner workings of the LMP algorithm we are able to
give an almost tight characterization of the integrality gap of the
standard linear relaxation of the problem. As a consequence we
obtain improved approximations for the Partial version of Multicut
and Path Hitting on Trees, Rectangle Stabbing, and Set Cover with
-Blocks
Bidimensionality and EPTAS
Bidimensionality theory is a powerful framework for the development of
metaalgorithmic techniques. It was introduced by Demaine et al. as a tool to
obtain sub-exponential time parameterized algorithms for problems on H-minor
free graphs. Demaine and Hajiaghayi extended the theory to obtain PTASs for
bidimensional problems, and subsequently improved these results to EPTASs.
Fomin et. al related the theory to the existence of linear kernels for
parameterized problems. In this paper we revisit bidimensionality theory from
the perspective of approximation algorithms and redesign the framework for
obtaining EPTASs to be more powerful, easier to apply and easier to understand.
Two of the most widely used approaches to obtain PTASs on planar graphs are
the Lipton-Tarjan separator based approach, and Baker's approach. Demaine and
Hajiaghayi strengthened both approaches using bidimensionality and obtained
EPTASs for a multitude of problems. We unify the two strenghtened approaches to
combine the best of both worlds. At the heart of our framework is a
decomposition lemma which states that for "most" bidimensional problems, there
is a polynomial time algorithm which given an H-minor-free graph G as input and
an e > 0 outputs a vertex set X of size e * OPT such that the treewidth of G n
X is f(e). Here, OPT is the objective function value of the problem in question
and f is a function depending only on e. This allows us to obtain EPTASs on
(apex)-minor-free graphs for all problems covered by the previous framework, as
well as for a wide range of packing problems, partial covering problems and
problems that are neither closed under taking minors, nor contractions. To the
best of our knowledge for many of these problems including cycle packing,
vertex-h-packing, maximum leaf spanning tree, and partial r-dominating set no
EPTASs on planar graphs were previously known
A LP approximation for the Tree Augmentation Problem
In the Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP) the goal is to augment a tree by a
minimum size edge set from a given edge set such that is
-edge-connected. The best approximation ratio known for TAP is . In the
more general Weighted TAP problem, should be of minimum weight. Weighted
TAP admits several -approximation algorithms w.r.t. to the standard cut
LP-relaxation, but for all of them the performance ratio of is tight even
for TAP. The problem is equivalent to the problem of covering a laminar set
family. Laminar set families play an important role in the design of
approximation algorithms for connectivity network design problems. In fact,
Weighted TAP is the simplest connectivity network design problem for which a
ratio better than is not known. Improving this "natural" ratio is a major
open problem, which may have implications on many other network design
problems. It seems that achieving this goal requires finding an LP-relaxation
with integrality gap better than , which is a long time open problem even
for TAP. In this paper we introduce such an LP-relaxation and give an algorithm
that computes a feasible solution for TAP of size at most times the
optimal LP value. This gives some hope to break the ratio for the weighted
case. Our algorithm computes some initial edge set by solving a partial system
of constraints that form the integral edge-cover polytope, and then applies
local search on -leaf subtrees to exchange some of the edges and to add
additional edges. Thus we do not need to solve the LP, and the algorithm runs
roughly in time required to find a minimum weight edge-cover in a general
graph.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1507.0279
Algorithms for covering multiple submodular constraints and applications
We consider the problem of covering multiple submodular constraints. Given a finite ground set N, a weight function , r monotone submodular functions over N and requirements the goal is to find a minimum weight subset such that for . We refer to this problem as Multi-Submod-Cover and it was recently considered by Har-Peled and Jones (Few cuts meet many point sets. CoRR. arxiv:abs1808.03260Har-Peled and Jones 2018) who were motivated by an application in geometry. Even with Multi-Submod-Cover generalizes the well-known Submodular Set Cover problem (Submod-SC), and it can also be easily reduced to Submod-SC. A simple greedy algorithm gives an approximation where and this ratio cannot be improved in the general case. In this paper, motivated by several concrete applications, we consider two ways to improve upon the approximation given by the greedy algorithm. First, we give a bicriteria approximation algorithm for Multi-Submod-Cover that covers each constraint to within a factor of while incurring an approximation of in the cost. Second, we consider the special case when each is a obtained from a truncated coverage function and obtain an algorithm that generalizes previous work on partial set cover (Partial-SC), covering integer programs (CIPs) and multiple vertex cover constraints Bera et al. (Theoret Comput Sci 555:2–8 Bera et al. 2014). Both these algorithms are based on mathematical programming relaxations that avoid the limitations of the greedy algorithm. We demonstrate the implications of our algorithms and related ideas to several applications ranging from geometric covering problems to clustering with outliers. Our work highlights the utility of the high-level model and the lens of submodularity in addressing this class of covering problems.publishedVersio
Lagrangian Relaxation and Partial Cover
Lagrangian relaxation has been used extensively in the design of
approximation algorithms. This paper studies its strengths and limitations when
applied to Partial Cover.Comment: 20 pages, extended abstract appeared in STACS 200
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
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