6,507 research outputs found
Minimum Makespan Multi-vehicle Dial-a-Ride
Dial a ride problems consist of a metric space (denoting travel time between
vertices) and a set of m objects represented as source-destination pairs, where
each object requires to be moved from its source to destination vertex. We
consider the multi-vehicle Dial a ride problem, with each vehicle having
capacity k and its own depot-vertex, where the objective is to minimize the
maximum completion time (makespan) of the vehicles. We study the "preemptive"
version of the problem, where an object may be left at intermediate vertices
and transported by more than one vehicle, while being moved from source to
destination. Our main results are an O(log^3 n)-approximation algorithm for
preemptive multi-vehicle Dial a ride, and an improved O(log t)-approximation
for its special case when there is no capacity constraint. We also show that
the approximation ratios improve by a log-factor when the underlying metric is
induced by a fixed-minor-free graph.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure. Preliminary version appeared in ESA 200
Network Design Problems with Bounded Distances via Shallow-Light Steiner Trees
In a directed graph with non-correlated edge lengths and costs, the
\emph{network design problem with bounded distances} asks for a cost-minimal
spanning subgraph subject to a length bound for all node pairs. We give a
bi-criteria -approximation for this
problem. This improves on the currently best known linear approximation bound,
at the cost of violating the distance bound by a factor of at
most~.
In the course of proving this result, the related problem of \emph{directed
shallow-light Steiner trees} arises as a subproblem. In the context of directed
graphs, approximations to this problem have been elusive. We present the first
non-trivial result by proposing a
-ap\-proxi\-ma\-tion, where are the
terminals.
Finally, we show how to apply our results to obtain an
-approximation for
\emph{light-weight directed -spanners}. For this, no non-trivial
approximation algorithm has been known before. All running times depends on
and and are polynomial in for any fixed
Dial a Ride from k-forest
The k-forest problem is a common generalization of both the k-MST and the
dense--subgraph problems. Formally, given a metric space on vertices
, with demand pairs and a ``target'' ,
the goal is to find a minimum cost subgraph that connects at least demand
pairs. In this paper, we give an -approximation
algorithm for -forest, improving on the previous best ratio of
by Segev & Segev.
We then apply our algorithm for k-forest to obtain approximation algorithms
for several Dial-a-Ride problems. The basic Dial-a-Ride problem is the
following: given an point metric space with objects each with its own
source and destination, and a vehicle capable of carrying at most objects
at any time, find the minimum length tour that uses this vehicle to move each
object from its source to destination. We prove that an -approximation
algorithm for the -forest problem implies an
-approximation algorithm for Dial-a-Ride. Using our
results for -forest, we get an -
approximation algorithm for Dial-a-Ride. The only previous result known for
Dial-a-Ride was an -approximation by Charikar &
Raghavachari; our results give a different proof of a similar approximation
guarantee--in fact, when the vehicle capacity is large, we give a slight
improvement on their results.Comment: Preliminary version in Proc. European Symposium on Algorithms, 200
Optimal Flood Control
A mathematical model for optimal control of the water levels in a chain of
reservoirs is studied. Some remarks regarding sensitivity with respect to the time horizon, terminal cost and forecast of inflow are made
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