Given a set @math of @math points in the plane, we solve the problems of constructing a geometric planar graph spanning @math 1) of minimum degree 2, and 2) which is 2-edge connected, respectively, and has max edge length bounded by a factor of 2 times the optimal; we also show that the factor 2 is best possible given appropriate connectivity conditions on the set @math , respectively. First, we construct in @math time a geometric planar graph of minimum degree 2 and max edge length bounded by 2 times the optimal. This is then used to construct in @math time a 2-edge connected geometric planar graph spanning @math with max edge length bounded by @math times the optimal, assuming that the set @math forms a connected Unit Disk Graph. Second, we prove that 2 times the optimal is always sufficient if the set of points forms a 2 edge connected Unit Disk Graph and give an algorithm that runs in @math time. We also show that for @math , there exists a set @math of @math points in the plane such that even though the Unit Disk Graph spanning @math is @math -vertex connected, there is no 2-edge connected geometric planar graph spanning @math even if the length of its edges is allowed to be up to 17 16.
Our problem is also related to the well-known bottleneck traveling salesman problem, i.e. finding a Hamiltonian cycle that minimizes the length of the longest edge, since such a cycle is 2 edge conected (but not necessarily planar). @cite_12 gave a 2-approximation algorithm for this problem and also showed that there is no better algorithm unless @math . There is also literature on constructing @math edge connected subgraphs with minimum number of edges. In @cite_3 it is proved that given a @math -edge connected graph there is an algorithm running in time @math which finds a @math -edge connected spanning subgraph whose number of edges is @math times the optimal, where @math is the number of edges and @math the number of vertices of the graph. An improvement is provided in @cite_1 in which a 4 3 approximation algorithm is given. Later, @cite_4 provided a 5 4-approximation algorithm. However in these results the resulting spanning subgraphs are not guaranteed to be planar.
@cite_3 @cite_1 @cite_12 @cite_4
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We consider the travelling salesman problem (TSP) problem on (the metric completion of) 3-edge-connected cubic graphs. These graphs are interesting because of the connection between their optimal solutions and the subtour elimination LP relaxation. Our main result is an approximation algorithm better than the 3 2-approximation algorithm for TSP in general. For some positive constant , we give a (3 2- )-approximation algorithm for the following problem: given a graph G_0=(V,E_0), find the shortest tour that visits every vertex at least once. This is a special case of the metric traveling salesman problem when the underlying metric is defined by shortest path distances in G_0. The result improves on the 3 2-approximation algorithm due to Christofides [C76] for this special case. Similar to Christofides, our algorithm finds a spanning tree whose cost is upper bounded by the optimum, then it finds the minimum cost Eulerian augmentation (or T-join) of that tree. The main difference is in the selection of the spanning tree. Except in certain cases where the solution of LP is nearly integral, we select the spanning tree randomly by sampling from a maximum entropy distribution defined by the linear programming relaxation. Despite the simplicity of the algorithm, the analysis builds on a variety of ideas such as properties of strongly Rayleigh measures from probability theory, graph theoretical results on the structure of near minimum cuts, and the integrality of the T-join polytope from polyhedral theory. Also, as a byproduct of our result, we show new properties of the near minimum cuts of any graph, which may be of independent interest. We present algorithmic and hardness results for network design problems with degree or order constraints. The first problem we consider is the Survivable Network Design problem with degree constraints on vertices. The objective is to find a minimum cost subgraph which satisfies connectivity requirements between vertices and also degree upper bounds @math on the vertices. This includes the well-studied Minimum Bounded Degree Spanning Tree problem as a special case. Our main result is a @math -approximation algorithm for the edge-connectivity Survivable Network Design problem with degree constraints, where the cost of the returned solution is at most twice the cost of an optimum solution (satisfying the degree bounds) and the degree of each vertex @math is at most @math . This implies the first constant factor (bicriteria) approximation algorithms for many degree constrained network design problems, including the Minimum Bounded Degree Steiner Forest problem. Our results also extend to directed graphs and provide the first constant factor (bicriteria) approximation algorithms for the Minimum Bounded Degree Arborescence problem and the Minimum Bounded Degree Strongly @math -Edge-Connected Subgraph problem. In contrast, we show that the vertex-connectivity Survivable Network Design problem with degree constraints is hard to approximate, even when the cost of every edge is zero. A striking aspect of our algorithmic result is its simplicity. It is based on the iterative relaxation method, which is an extension of Jain's iterative rounding method. This provides an elegant and unifying algorithmic framework for a broad range of network design problems. We also study the problem of finding a minimum cost @math -edge-connected subgraph with at least @math vertices, which we call the @math -subgraph problem. This generalizes some well-studied classical problems such as the @math -MST and the minimum cost @math -edge-connected subgraph problems. We give a polylogarithmic approximation for the @math -subgraph problem. However, by relating it to the Densest @math -Subgraph problem, we provide evidence that the @math -subgraph problem might be hard to approximate for arbitrary @math . We present a general approximation technique for a large class of graph problems. Our technique mostly applies to problems of covering, at minimum cost, the vertices of a graph with trees, cycles or paths satisfying certain requirements. In particular, many basic combinatorial optimization problems fit in this framework, including the shortest path, minimum-cost spanning tree, minimum-weight perfect matching, traveling salesman and Steiner tree problems. Our technique produces approximation algorithms that run in @math time and come within a factor of 2 of optimal for most of these problems. For instance, we obtain a 2-approximation algorithm for the minimum-weight perfect matching problem under the triangle inequality. Our running time of @math time compares favorably with the best strongly polynomial exact algorithms running in @math time for dense graphs. A similar result is obtained for the 2-matching problem and its variants. We also derive the first approximation algorithms for many NP-complete problems, including the non-fixed point-to-point connection problem, the exact path partitioning problem and complex location-design problems. Moreover, for the prize-collecting traveling salesman or Steiner tree problems, we obtain 2-approximation algorithms, therefore improving the previously best-known performance guarantees of 2.5 and 3, respectively [Math. Programming, 59 (1993), pp. 413--420]. A 5 4-approximation algorithm is presented for the minimum cardinality 2-edge-connected spanning subgraph problem in undirected graphs. This improves the previous best approximation ratio of 4 3. It is shown that our ratio is tight with respect to current lower bounds, and any further improvement is possible only if new lower bounds are discovered. 2-Edge connectivity is an important fault tolerance property of a network because it maintains network communication despite the deletion of a single arbitrary edge. Planar spanning subgraphs have been shown to play a significant role for achieving local decentralized routing in wireless networks. Existing algorithmic constructions of spanning planar subgraphs of unit disk graphs (UDGs) such as Minimum Spanning Tree, Gabriel Graph, Nearest Neighborhood Graph, etc. do not always ensure connectivity of the resulting graph under single edge deletion. Furthermore, adding edges to the network so as to improve its edge connectivity not only may create edge crossings (at points which are not vertices) but it may also require edges of unbounded length. Thus we are faced with the problem of constructing 2-edge connected geometric planar spanning graphs by adding edges of bounded length without creating edge crossings (at points which are not vertices). To overcome this difficulty, in this paper we address the problem of augmenting the edge set (i.e., adding new edges) of planar geometric graphs with straight line edges of bounded length so that the resulting graph is planar and 2-edge connected. We provide bounds on the number of newly added straight-line edges, prove that such edges can be of length at most 3 times the max length of an edge of the original graph, and also show that the factor 3 is optimal. It is shown to be NP-Complete to augment a geometric planar graph to a 2-edge connected geometric planar graph with the minimum number of new edges of a given bounded length. We also provide a constant time algorithm that works in location-aware settings to augment a planar graph into a 2-edge connected planar graph with straight-line edges of length bounded by 3 times the longest edge of the original graph. It turns out that knowledge of vertex coordinates is crucial to our construction and in fact we prove that this problem cannot be solved locally if the vertices do not know their coordinates. Moreover, we provide a family of k-connected UDGs which does not have 2-edge connected spanning planar subgraphs, for any . We show that the traveling salesman problem with triangle inequality cannot be approximated with a ratio better than @math when the edge lengths are allowed to be asymmetric and @math when the edge lengths are symmetric, unless P=NP. The best previous lower bounds were @math and @math respectively. The reduction is from Hastad’s maximum satisfiability of linear equations modulo 2, and is nonconstructive. We consider the metric Traveling Salesman Problem (Δ-TSP for short) and study how stability (as defined by Bilu and Linial [3]) influences the complexity of the problem. On an intuitive level, an instance of Δ-TSP is γ-stable (γ > 1), if there is a unique optimum Hamiltonian tour and any perturbation of arbitrary edge weights by at most γ does not change the edge set of the optimal solution (i.e., there is a significant gap between the optimum tour and all other tours). We show that for γ ≥ 1.8 a simple greedy algorithm (resembling Prim's algorithm for constructing a minimum spanning tree) computes the optimum Hamiltonian tour for every γ-stable instance of the Δ-TSP, whereas a simple local search algorithm can fail to find the optimum even if γ is arbitrary. We further show that there are γ-stable instances of Δ-TSP for every 1 < γ < 2. These results provide a different view on the hardness of the Δ-TSP and give rise to a new class of problem instances which are substantially easier to solve than instances of the general Δ-TSP. We present an O(nlogn)-approximation algorithm for the problem of finding the sparsest spanner of a given directed graph G on n vertices. A spanner of a graph is a sparse subgraph that approximately preserves distances in the original graph. More precisely, given a graph G=(V,E) with nonnegative edge lengths d:E->R^>=^0 and a stretchk>=1, a subgraph H=(V,E"H) is a k-spanner of G if for every edge (s,t)@?E, the graph H contains a path from s to t of length at most [email protected]?d(s,t). The previous best approximation ratio was [email protected]?(n^2^ ^3), due to Dinitz and Krauthgamer (STOC @?11). We also improve the approximation ratio for the important special case of directed 3-spanners with unit edge lengths from [email protected]?(n) to O(n^1^ ^3logn). The best previously known algorithms for this problem are due to Berman, Raskhodnikova and Ruan (FSTTCS @?10) and Dinitz and Krauthgamer. The approximation ratio of our algorithm almost matches Dinitz and [email protected]?s lower bound for the integrality gap of a natural linear programming relaxation. Our algorithm directly implies an O(n^1^ ^3logn)-approximation for the 3-spanner problem on undirected graphs with unit lengths. An easy O(n)-approximation algorithm for this problem has been the best known for decades. Finally, we consider the Directed Steiner Forest problem: given a directed graph with edge costs and a collection of ordered vertex pairs, find a minimum-cost subgraph that contains a path between every prescribed pair. We obtain an approximation ratio of O(n^2^ ^3^+^@e) for any constant @e>0, which improves the O(n^@[email protected]?min(n^4^ ^5,m^2^ ^3)) ratio due to Feldman, Kortsarz and Nutov ([email protected]?12). We consider the k-traveling repairmen problem, also known as the minimum latency problem, to multiple repairmen. We give a polynomial-time 8.497α-approximation algorithm for this generalization, where α denotes the best achievable approximation factor for the problem of finding the least-cost rooted tree spanning i vertices of a metric. For the latter problem, a (2 p e)-approximation is known. Our results can be compared with the best-known approximation algorithm using similar techniques for the case k e 1, which is 3.59α. Moreover, recent work of [2003] shows how to remove the factor of α, thus improving all of these results by that factor. We are aware of no previous work on the approximability of the present problem. In addition, we give a simple proof of the 3.59α-approximation result that can be more easily extended to the case of multiple repairmen, and may be of independent interest. This paper introduces the concept of low-congestion shortcuts for (near-)planar networks, and demonstrates their power by using them to obtain near-optimal distributed algorithms for problems such as Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) or Minimum Cut, in planar networks. Consider a graph G = (V, E) and a partitioning of V into subsets of nodes S1, . . ., SN, each inducing a connected subgraph G[Si]. We define an α-congestion shortcut with dilation β to be a set of subgraphs H1, . . ., HN ⊆ G, one for each subset Si, such that 1. For each i ∈ [1, N], the diameter of the subgraph G[Si] + Hi is at most β. 2. For each edge e ∈ E, the number of subgraphs G[Si] + Hi containing e is at most α. We prove that any partition of a D-diameter planar graph into individually-connected parts admits an O(D log D)-congestion shortcut with dilation O(D log D), and we also present a distributed construction of it in O(D) rounds. We moreover prove these parameters to be near-optimal; i.e., there are instances in which, unavoidably, max α, β = Ω(D[EQUATION]). Finally, we use low-congestion shortcuts, and their efficient distributed construction, to derive O(D)-round distributed algorithms for MST and Min-Cut, in planar networks. This complexity nearly matches the trivial lower bound of Ω(D). We remark that this is the first result bypassing the well-known Ω(D + [EQUATION]) existential lower bound of general graphs (see Peleg and Rubinovich [FOCS'99]; Elkin [STOC'04]; and Das [STOC'11]) in a family of graphs of interest. In the survivable network design problem (SNDP), given an undirected graph and values r sub ij for each pair of vertices i and j, we attempt to find a minimum-cost subgraph such that there are r sub ij disjoint paths between vertices i and j. In the edge connected version of this problem (EC-SNDP), these paths must be edge-disjoint. In the vertex connected version of the problem (VC-SNDP), the paths must be vertex disjoint. K. (1999) propose a version of the problem intermediate in difficulty to these two, called the element connectivity problem (ELC-SNDP, or ELC). These variants of SNDP are all known to be NP-hard. The best known approximation algorithm for the EC-SNDP has performance guarantee of 2 (K. Jain, 2001), and iteratively rounds solutions to a linear programming relaxation of the problem. ELC has a primal-dual O (log k) approximation algorithm, where k=max sub i,j r sub ij . VC-SNDP is not known to have a non-trivial approximation algorithm; however, recently L. Fleischer (2001) has shown how to extend the technique of K. Jain ( 2001) to give a 2-approximation algorithm in the case that r sub ij spl isin 0, 1, 2 . She also shows that the same techniques will not work for VC-SNDP for more general values of r sub ij . The authors show that these techniques can be extended to a 2-approximation algorithm for ELC. This gives the first constant approximation algorithm for a general survivable network design problem which allows node failures. Given an arc-weighted directed graph G = (V, A, spl lscr ) and a pair of nodes s, t, we seek to find an s-t walk of length at most B that maximizes some given function f of the set of nodes visited by the walk. The simplest case is when we seek to maximize the number of nodes visited: this is called the orienteering problem. Our main result is a quasi-polynomial time algorithm that yields an O(log OPT) approximation for this problem when f is a given submodular set function. We then extend it to the case when a node v is counted as visited only if the walk reaches v in its time window [R(v), D(v)]. We apply the algorithm to obtain several new results. First, we obtain an O(log OPT) approximation for a generalization of the orienteering problem in which the profit for visiting each node may vary arbitrarily with time. This captures the time window problem considered earlier for which, even in undirected graphs, the best approximation ratio known [Bansal, (2004)] is O(log sup 2 OPT). The second application is an O(log sup 2 k) approximation for the k-TSP problem in directed graphs (satisfying asymmetric triangle inequality). This is the first non-trivial approximation algorithm for this problem. The third application is an O(log sup 2 k) approximation (in quasi-poly time) for the group Steiner problem in undirected graphs where k is the number of groups. This improves earlier ratios (Garg, ) by a logarithmic factor and almost matches the inapproximability threshold on trees (Halperin and Krauthgamer, 2003). This connection to group Steiner trees also enables us to prove that the problem we consider is hard to approximate to a ratio better than spl Omega (log sup 1- spl epsi OPT), even in undirected graphs. Even though our algorithm runs in quasi-poly time, we believe that the implications for the approximability of several basic optimization problems are interesting. We present a probabilistic algorithm that, given a connected graph G (represented by adjacency lists) of average degree d, with edge weights in the set 1,...,w , and given a parameter @math , estimates in time @math the weight of the minimum spanning tree (MST) of G with a relative error of at most @math . Note that the running time does not depend on the number of vertices in G. We also prove a nearly matching lower bound of @math on the probe and time complexity of any approximation algorithm for MST weight. The essential component of our algorithm is a procedure for estimating in time @math the number of connected components of an unweighted graph to within an additive error of @math . (This becomes @math for @math .) The time bound is shown to be tight up to within the @math factor. Our connected-components algorithm picks @math vertices in the graph and then grows "local spanning trees" whose sizes are specified by a stochastic process. From the local information collected in this way, the algorithm is able to infer, with high confidence, an estimate of the number of connected components. We then show how estimates on the number of components in various subgraphs of G can be used to estimate the weight of its MST. The relationship between the symmetric traveling-salesman problem and the minimum spanning tree problem yields a sharp lower bound on the cost of an optimum tour. An efficient iterative method for approximating this bound closely from below is presented. A branch-and-bound procedure based upon these considerations has easily produced proven optimum solutions to all traveling-salesman problems presented to it, ranging in size up to sixty-four cities. The bounds used are so sharp that the search trees are minuscule compared to those normally encountered in combinatorial problems of this type. 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. We present an approximation algorithm for the problem of finding a minimum-cost k-vertex connected spanning subgraph, assuming that the number of vertices is at least 6k 2 . The approximation guarantee is six times the kth harmonic number (which is O(log k)), and this is also an upper bound on the integrality ratio for a standard linear programming relaxation. The densest subgraph problem, which asks for a subgraph with the maximum edges-to-vertices ratio d∗, is solvable in polynomial time. We discuss algorithms for this problem and the computation of a graph orientation with the lowest maximum indegree, which is equal to ⌈d∗⌉. This value also equals the pseudoarboricity of the graph. We show that it can be computed in O(|E| √ log log d∗) time, and that better estimates can be given for graph classes where d∗ satisfies certain asymptotic bounds. These runtimes are achieved by accelerating a binary search with an approximation scheme, and a runtime analysis of Dinitz’s algorithm on flow networks where all arcs, except the source and sink arcs, have unit capacity. We experimentally compare implementations of various algorithms for the densest subgraph and pseudoarboricity problems. In flow-based algorithms, Dinitz’s algorithm performs significantly better than push-relabel algorithms on all instances tested. For an unweighted undirected graph G= (V,E), and a pair of positive integers α ≥ 1, β ≥ 0, a subgraph G'= (V,H), H ⊆ E, is called an (α,β)-spanner of G if for every pair of vertices u, v ∈ V, dist G' (u,v) ≤ α • dist G' (u,v) + β.It was shown in [20] that for any e > 0, κ = 1,2, ..., there exists an integer β = β(e,κ) such that for every n-vertex graph G there exists a (1+e,β)-spanner G' with O(n1+1 κ) edges. An efficient distributed protocol for constructing (1+e,β)-spanners was devised in [18]. The running time and the communication complexity of that protocol are O(n1+ρ) and O(|E|nρ), respectively, where ρ is an additional control parameter of the protocol that affects only the additive term β.In this paper we devise a protocol with a drastically improved running time (O(nρ) as opposed to (O(n1+ρ) for constructing (1+e,β)-spanners. Our protocol has the same communication complexity as the protocol of [18], and it constructs spanners with essentially the same properties as the spanners that are constructed by the protocol of [18].We also show that our protocol for constructing (1+e, β)-spanners can be adapted to the streaming model, and devise a streaming algorithm that uses a constant number of passes and O(n1+1 κ • log n) bits of space for computing all-pairs-almost-shortest-paths of length at most by a multiplicative factor (1 + e) and an additive term of β greater than the shortest paths. Our algorithm processes each edge in time O(nρ), for an arbitrarily small ρ > 0. The only previously known algorithm for the problem [21] constructs paths of length κ times greater than the shortest paths, has the same space requirements as our algorithm, but requires O(n1+1 κ) time for processing each edge of the input graph. However, the algorithm of [21] uses just one pass over the input, as opposed to the constant number of passes in our algorithm. We also show that any streaming algorithm for o(n)-approximate distance computation requires Ω(n) bits of space. We present a Las Vegas algorithm for dynamically maintaining a minimum spanning forest of an n-node graph undergoing edge insertions and deletions. Our algorithm guarantees an O(n^ o(1) ) worst-case update time with high probability. This significantly improves the two recent Las Vegas algorithms by Wulff-Nilsen Wulff-Nilsen16a with update time O(n^ 0.5-&#x2265;ilon ) for some constant &#x2265;ilon 0 and, independently, by Nanongkai and Saranurak NanongkaiS16 with update time O(n^ 0.494 ) (the latter works only for maintaining a spanning forest).Our result is obtained by identifying the common framework that both two previous algorithms rely on, and then improve and combine the ideas from both works. There are two main algorithmic components of the framework that are newly improved and critical for obtaining our result. First, we improve the update time from O(n^ 0.5-&#x2265;ilon ) in Wulff-Nilsen16a to O(n^ o(1) ) for decrementally removing all low-conductance cuts in an expander undergoing edge deletions. Second, by revisiting the contraction technique by Henzinger and King HenzingerK97b and HolmLT01, we show a new approach for maintaining a minimum spanning forest in connected graphs with very few (at most (1+o(1))n) edges. This significantly improves the previous approach in Wulff-Nilsen16a, NanongkaiS16 which is based on Fredericksons 2-dimensional topology tree Frederickson85 and illustrates a new application to this old technique.