112,750 research outputs found
Message passing for the coloring problem: Gallager meets Alon and Kahale
Message passing algorithms are popular in many combinatorial optimization
problems. For example, experimental results show that {\em survey propagation}
(a certain message passing algorithm) is effective in finding proper
-colorings of random graphs in the near-threshold regime. In 1962 Gallager
introduced the concept of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, and suggested
a simple decoding algorithm based on message passing. In 1994 Alon and Kahale
exhibited a coloring algorithm and proved its usefulness for finding a
-coloring of graphs drawn from a certain planted-solution distribution over
-colorable graphs. In this work we show an interpretation of Alon and
Kahale's coloring algorithm in light of Gallager's decoding algorithm, thus
showing a connection between the two problems - coloring and decoding. This
also provides a rigorous evidence for the usefulness of the message passing
paradigm for the graph coloring problem. Our techniques can be applied to
several other combinatorial optimization problems and networking-related
issues.Comment: 11 page
- …