157 research outputs found
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
Prize-Collecting Steiner Networks via Iterative Rounding
Abstract. In this paper we design an iterative rounding approach for the classic prize-collecting Steiner forest problem and more generally the prize-collecting survivable Steiner network design problem. We show as an structural result that in each iteration of our algorithm there is an LP variable in a basic feasible solution which is at least one-third-integral resulting a 3-approximation algorithm for this problem. In addition, we show this factor 3 in our structural result is indeed tight for prize-collecting Steiner forest and thus prize-collecting survivable Steiner network design. This especially answers negatively the previous belief that one might be able to obtain an approximation factor better than 3 for these problems using a natural iterative rounding approach. Our structural result is extending the celebrated iterative rounding approach of Jain [13] by using several new ideas some from more complicated linear algebra. The approach of this paper can be also applied to get a constant factor (bicriteria-)approximation algorithm for degree constrained prize-collecting network design problems. We emphasize that though in theory we can prove existence of only an LP variable of at least one-third-integral, in practice very often in each iteration there exists a variable of integral or almost integral which results in a much better approximation factor than provable factor 3 in this paper (see patent application [11]). This is indeed the advantage of our algorithm in this paper over previous approximation algorithms for prize-collecting Steiner forest with the same or slightly better provable approximation factors.
Knapsack Cover Subject to a Matroid Constraint
We consider the Knapsack Covering problem subject to a matroid constraint. In this problem, we are given an universe U of n items where item i has attributes: a cost c(i) and a size s(i). We also have a demand D. We are also given a matroid M = (U, I) on the set U. A feasible solution S to the problem is one such that (i) the cumulative size of the items chosen is at least D, and (ii) the set S is independent in the matroid M (i.e. S is in I). The objective is to minimize the total cost of the items selected, sum_{i in S}c(i).
Our main result proves a 2-factor approximation for this problem.
The problem described above falls in the realm of mixed packing covering problems. We also consider packing extensions of certain other covering problems and prove that in such cases it is not possible to derive any constant factor pproximations
Further Approximations for Demand Matching: Matroid Constraints and Minor-Closed Graphs
We pursue a study of the Generalized Demand Matching problem, a common generalization of the b-Matching and Knapsack problems. Here, we are given a graph with vertex capacities, edge profits, and asymmetric demands on the edges. The goal is to find a maximum-profit subset of edges so the demands of chosen edges do not violate the vertex capacities. This problem is APX-hard and constant-factor approximations are already known.
Our main results fall into two categories. First, using iterated relaxation and various filtering strategies, we show with an efficient rounding algorithm that if an additional matroid structure M is given and we further only allow sets that are independent in M, the natural LP relaxation has an integrality gap of at most 25/3. This can be further improved
in various special cases, for example we improve over the 15-approximation for the previously- studied Coupled Placement problem [Korupolu et al. 2014] by giving a 7-approximation.
Using similar techniques, we show the problem of computing a minimum-cost base in M satisfying vertex capacities admits a (1,3)-bicriteria approximation: the cost is at most the optimum and the capacities are violated by a factor of at most 3. This improves over the previous (1,4)-approximation in the special case that M is the graphic matroid over the given graph [Fukanaga and Nagamochi, 2009].
Second, we show Demand Matching admits a polynomial-time approximation scheme in graphs that exclude a fixed minor. If all demands are polynomially-bounded integers, this is somewhat easy using dynamic programming in bounded-treewidth graphs. Our main technical contribution is a sparsification lemma that allows us to scale the demands of some items to be used in a more intricate dynamic programming algorithm, followed by some randomized rounding to filter our scaled-demand solution to one whose original demands satisfy all constraints
Pruning 2-Connected Graphs
Given an edge-weighted undirected graph with a specified set of
terminals, let the emph{density} of any subgraph be the ratio of
its weight/cost to the number of terminals it contains. If is
2-connected, does it contain smaller 2-connected subgraphs of
density comparable to that of ? We answer this question in the
affirmative by giving an algorithm to emph{prune} and find such
subgraphs of any desired size, at the cost of only a logarithmic
increase in density (plus a small additive factor).
We apply the pruning techniques to give algorithms for two NP-Hard
problems on finding large 2-vertex-connected subgraphs of low cost;
no previous approximation algorithm was known for either problem. In
the kv problem, we are given an undirected graph with edge
costs and an integer ; the goal is to find a minimum-cost
2-vertex-connected subgraph of containing at least
vertices. In the bv problem, we are given the graph with edge
costs, and a budget ; the goal is to find a 2-vertex-connected
subgraph of with total edge cost at most that maximizes
the number of vertices in . We describe an
approximation for the kv problem, and a bicriteria approximation
for the bv problem that gives an
approximation, while violating the budget by a factor of at most
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