1,310 research outputs found
Approximating Minimum Cost Connectivity Orientation and Augmentation
We investigate problems addressing combined connectivity augmentation and
orientations settings. We give a polynomial-time 6-approximation algorithm for
finding a minimum cost subgraph of an undirected graph that admits an
orientation covering a nonnegative crossing -supermodular demand function,
as defined by Frank. An important example is -edge-connectivity, a
common generalization of global and rooted edge-connectivity.
Our algorithm is based on a non-standard application of the iterative
rounding method. We observe that the standard linear program with cut
constraints is not amenable and use an alternative linear program with
partition and co-partition constraints instead. The proof requires a new type
of uncrossing technique on partitions and co-partitions.
We also consider the problem setting when the cost of an edge can be
different for the two possible orientations. The problem becomes substantially
more difficult already for the simpler requirement of -edge-connectivity.
Khanna, Naor, and Shepherd showed that the integrality gap of the natural
linear program is at most when and conjectured that it is constant
for all fixed . We disprove this conjecture by showing an
integrality gap even when
LP-Based Algorithms for Capacitated Facility Location
Linear programming has played a key role in the study of algorithms for
combinatorial optimization problems. In the field of approximation algorithms,
this is well illustrated by the uncapacitated facility location problem. A
variety of algorithmic methodologies, such as LP-rounding and primal-dual
method, have been applied to and evolved from algorithms for this problem.
Unfortunately, this collection of powerful algorithmic techniques had not yet
been applicable to the more general capacitated facility location problem. In
fact, all of the known algorithms with good performance guarantees were based
on a single technique, local search, and no linear programming relaxation was
known to efficiently approximate the problem.
In this paper, we present a linear programming relaxation with constant
integrality gap for capacitated facility location. We demonstrate that the
fundamental theories of multi-commodity flows and matchings provide key
insights that lead to the strong relaxation. Our algorithmic proof of
integrality gap is obtained by finally accessing the rich toolbox of LP-based
methodologies: we present a constant factor approximation algorithm based on
LP-rounding.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures; minor revision
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