We present a factor 2 approximation algorithm for finding a minimum-cost subgraph having at least a specified number of edges in each cut. This class of problems includes, among others, the generalized Steiner network problem, which is also known as the survivable network design problem. Our algorithm first solves the linear relaxation of this problem, and then iteratively rounds off the solution. The key idea in rounding off is that in a basic solution of the LP relaxation, at least one edge gets included at least to the extent of half. We include this edge into our integral solution and solve the residual problem. 1 Introduction We consider the problem of finding a minimum-cost subgraph of a given graph such that the number of edges crossing each cut is at least a specified requirement. Formally, given an undirected multigraph G = (V; E), a non-negative cost function c : E ! Q+ , and a requirement function f : 2 V ! Z , solve the following integer program (IP): min X e2E c e x...

Recently, there have been increasing interests and progresses in lowering the worst case time complexity for well-known NP-hard problems, in particular for the Vertex Cover problem. In this paper, new properties for the Vertex Cover problem are indicated and several simple and new techniques are introduced, which lead to an improved algorithm of time O(kn + 1:271 k k 2 ) for the problem. Our algorithm also induces improvement on previous algorithms for the Independent Set problem on graphs of small degree. 1 Introduction Many optimization problems from industrial applications are NP-hard. According to the NPcompleteness theory [10], these problems cannot be solved in polynomial time unless P = NP. However, this fact does not obviate the need for solving these problems for their practical importance. There has been a number of approaches to attacking the NP-hardness of optimization problems, including approximation algorithms, heuristic algorithms, and average time analysis. Recent...

Unit disk graphs are intersection graphs of circles of unit radius in the plane. We present simple and provably good heuristics for a number of classical NP-hard optimization problems on unit disk graphs. The problems considered include maximum independent set, minimum vertex cover, minimum coloring and minimum dominating set. We also present an on-line coloring heuristic which achieves a competitive ratio of 6 for unit disk graphs. Our heuristics do not need a geometric representation of unit disk graphs. Geometric representations are used only in establishing the performance guarantees of the heuristics. Several of our approximation algorithms can be extended to intersection graphs of circles of arbitrary radii in the plane, intersection graphs of regular polygons, and to intersection graphs of higher dimensional regular objects.

This survey examines the state of the art of a variety of problems related to pseudo-Boolean optimization, i.e. to the optimization of set functions represented by closed algebraic expressions. The main parts of the survey examine general pseudo-Boolean optimization, the specially important case of quadratic pseudo-Boolean optimization (to which every pseudo-Boolean optimization can be reduced), several other important special classes, and approximation algorithms.

A parameterized problem is xed parameter tractable if it admits a solving algorithm whose running time on input instance (I; k) is f(k) jIj , where f is an arbitrary function depending only on k. Typically, f is some exponential function, e.g., f(k) = c k for constant c. We describe general techniques to obtain growth of the form f(k) = c p k for a large variety of planar graph problems. The key to this type of algorithm is what we call the "Layerwise Separation Property" of a planar graph problem. Problems having this property include planar vertex cover, planar independent set, and planar dominating set.

We present a method for solving the independent set formulation of the graph coloring problem (where there is one variable for each independent set in the graph). We use a column generation method for implicit optimization of the linear program at each node of the branch-and-bound tree. This approach, while requiring the solution of a difficult subproblem as well as needing sophisticated branching rules, solves small to moderate size problems quickly. We have also implemented an exact graph coloring algorithm based on DSATUR for comparison. Implementation details and computational experience are presented. 1 INTRODUCTION The graph coloring problem is one of the most useful models in graph theory. This problem has been used to solve problems in school timetabling [10], computer register allocation [7, 8], electronic bandwidth allocation [11], and many other areas. These applications suggest that effective algorithms for solving the graph coloring problem would be of great importance. D...

We present a simple and unified approach for developing and analyzing approximation algorithms for covering problems. We illustrate this on approximation algorithms for the following problems: Vertex Cover, Set Cover, Feedback Vertex Set, Generalized Steiner Forest and related problems. The main idea can be phrased as follows: iteratively, pay two dollars (at most) to reduce the total optimum by one dollar (at least), so the rate of payment is no more than twice the rate of the optimum reduction. This implies a total payment (i.e., approximation cost) ~ twice the optimum cost. Our main contribution is based on a formal definition for covering problems, which includes all the above fundamental problems and others. We further extend the Bafna, Berman and Fujito Local-Ratio theorem. This extension eventually yields a short generic r-approximation algorithm which can generate most known approximation algorithms for most covering problems. Another extension of the Local-Ratio theorem to randomized algorithms gives a simple proof of Pitt's randomized approximation for Vertex Cover. Using this approach, we develop a modified greedy algorithm, which for Vertex Cover, gives an expected performance ratio <= 2.

this paper appeared in the conference proceedings of APPROX 2002

... for short, is one of the ~implest, most efficient, and most thoroughly studied methods for finding independent sets in graphs. We show that it surprisingly achieves a performance ratio of (A+ 2)/3 for approximating inde-pendent sets in graphs with degree bounded by A. The analysis directs us towards a simple parallel and dis-tributed algorithm with identical performance, which on constant-degree graphs runs in O(log ” n) time us-ing linear number of processors. We also analyze the Greedy algorithm when run in combination with a frac-tional relaxation technique of Nemhauser and Trotter, and obtain an improved (2Z + 3)/5 performance ratio on graphs with average degree ~. Finally, we introduce a generally applicable technique for improving the approximation ratios of independent set algorithms, and illustrate it by improving the per-formance ratio of Greedy for large ∆.

This paper continues the work initiated by Creignou [5] and Khanna, Sudan and Williamson [15] who classify maximization problems derived from Boolean constraint satisfaction. Here we study the approximability of minimization problems derived thence. A problem in this framework is characterized by a collection�of “constraints” (i.e., functions����������) and an instance of a problem is constraints drawn from�applied to specified subsets of Boolean variables. We study the two minimization analogs of classes studied in [15]: in one variant, namely MIN CSP�, the objective is to find an assignment to minimize the number of unsatisfied constraints, while in the other, namely MIN ONES�, the goal is to find a satisfying assignment with minimum number of ones. These two classes together capture an entire spectrum of important minimization problems including- Min Cut, vertex cover, hitting set with bounded size sets, integer programs with two variables per inequality, graph bipartization, clause deletion in CNF formulae, and nearest codeword. Our main result is that there exists a finite partition of the space of all constraint sets such that for any given�, the approximability of MIN CSP�and MIN ONES� is completely determined by the partition containing it. Moreover, we present a compact set of rules that determines which partition contains a given family�. Our classification identifies the central elements governing the approximability of problems in these classes, by unifying a large collection algorithmic and hardness of approximation results. When contrasted with the work of [15], our results also serve to formally highlight inherent differences between maximization and minimization problems.