A lazy approach to on-line bipartite matching

Abstract

We present a new approach, called a lazy matching, to the problem of on-line matching on bipartite graphs. Imagine that one side of a graph is given and the vertices of the other side are arriving on-line. Originally, incoming vertex is either irrevocably matched to an another element or stays forever unmatched. A lazy algorithm is allowed to match a new vertex to a group of elements (possibly empty) and afterwords, forced against next vertices, may give up parts of the group. The restriction is that all the time each element is in at most one group. We present an optimal lazy algorithm (deterministic) and prove that its competitive ratio equals $1-\pi/\cosh(\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}\pi)\approx 0.588$. The lazy approach allows us to break the barrier of $1/2$, which is the best competitive ratio that can be guaranteed by any deterministic algorithm in the classical on-line matching