Min-Cost Bipartite Perfect Matching with Delays

In the min-cost bipartite perfect matching with delays (MBPMD) problem, requests arrive online at points of a finite metric space. Each request is either positive or negative and has to be matched to a request of opposite polarity. As opposed to traditional online matching problems, the algorithm does not have to serve requests as they arrive, and may choose to match them later at a cost. Our objective is to minimize the sum of the distances between matched pairs of requests (the connection cost) and the sum of the waiting times of the requests (the delay cost). This objective exhibits a natural tradeoff between minimizing the distances and the cost of waiting for better matches. This tradeoff appears in many real-life scenarios, notably, ride-sharing platforms. MBPMD is related to its non-bipartite variant, min-cost perfect matching with delays (MPMD), in which each request can be matched to any other request. MPMD was introduced by Emek et al. (STOC\u2716), who showed an O(log^2(n)+log(Delta))-competitive randomized algorithm on n-point metric spaces with aspect ratio Delta. Our contribution is threefold. First, we present a new lower bound construction for MPMD and MBPMD. We get a lower bound of Omega(sqrt(log(n)/log(log(n)))) on the competitive ratio of any randomized algorithm for MBPMD. For MPMD, we improve the lower bound from Omega(sqrt(log(n))) (shown by Azar et al., SODA\u2717) to Omega(log(n)/log(log(n))), thus, almost matching their upper bound of O(log(n)). Second, we adapt the algorithm of Emek et al. to the bipartite case, and provide a simplified analysis that improves the competitive ratio to O(log(n)). The key ingredient of the algorithm is an O(h)-competitive randomized algorithm for MBPMD on weighted trees of height h. Third, we provide an O(h)-competitive deterministic algorithm for MBPMD on weighted trees of height h. This algorithm is obtained by adapting the algorithm for MPMD by Azar et al. to the apparently more complicated bipartite setting

A Match in Time Saves Nine: Deterministic Online Matching With Delays

We consider the problem of online Min-cost Perfect Matching with Delays (MPMD) introduced by Emek et al. (STOC 2016). In this problem, an even number of requests appear in a metric space at different times and the goal of an online algorithm is to match them in pairs. In contrast to traditional online matching problems, in MPMD all requests appear online and an algorithm can match any pair of requests, but such decision may be delayed (e.g., to find a better match). The cost is the sum of matching distances and the introduced delays. We present the first deterministic online algorithm for this problem. Its competitive ratio is $O(m^{\log_2 5.5})$ $= O(m^{2.46})$, where $2 m$ is the number of requests. This is polynomial in the number of metric space points if all requests are given at different points. In particular, the bound does not depend on other parameters of the metric, such as its aspect ratio. Unlike previous (randomized) solutions for the MPMD problem, our algorithm does not need to know the metric space in advance

Impatient Online Matching

We investigate the problem of Min-cost Perfect Matching with Delays (MPMD) in which requests are pairwise matched in an online fashion with the objective to minimize the sum of space cost and time cost. Though linear-MPMD (i.e., time cost is linear in delay) has been thoroughly studied in the literature, it does not well model impatient requests that are common in practice. Thus, we propose convex-MPMD where time cost functions are convex, capturing the situation where time cost increases faster and faster. Since the existing algorithms for linear-MPMD are not competitive any more, we devise a new deterministic algorithm for convex-MPMD problems. For a large class of convex time cost functions, our algorithm achieves a competitive ratio of O(k) on any k-point uniform metric space. Moreover, our deterministic algorithm is asymptotically optimal, which uncover a substantial difference between convex-MPMD and linear-MPMD which allows a deterministic algorithm with constant competitive ratio on any uniform metric space

Deterministic Primal-Dual Algorithms for Online k-way Matching with Delays

In this paper, we study the Min-cost Perfect $k$-way Matching with Delays ($k$-MPMD), recently introduced by Melnyk et al. In the problem, $m$ requests arrive one-by-one over time in a metric space. At any time, we can irrevocably make a group of $k$ requests who arrived so far, that incurs the distance cost among the $k$ requests in addition to the sum of the waiting cost for the $k$ requests. The goal is to partition all the requests into groups of $k$ requests, minimizing the total cost. The problem is a generalization of the min-cost perfect matching with delays (corresponding to $2$-MPMD). It is known that no online algorithm for $k$-MPMD can achieve a bounded competitive ratio in general, where the competitive ratio is the worst-case ratio between its performance and the offline optimal value. On the other hand, $k$-MPMD is known to admit a randomized online algorithm with competitive ratio $O(k^{5}\log n)$ for a certain class of $k$-point metrics called the $H$-metric, where $n$ is the size of the metric space. In this paper, we propose a deterministic online algorithm with a competitive ratio of $O(mk^2)$ for the $k$-MPMD in $H$-metric space. Furthermore, we show that the competitive ratio can be improved to $O(m + k^2)$ if the metric is given as a diameter on a line