Given a graph @math , a non-negative integer @math , and a weight function that maps each vertex in @math to a positive real number, the is about finding a maximum weighted independent set in @math of cardinality at most @math . A special case of MWBIS, when the weight assigned to each vertex is equal to its degree in @math , is called the problem. In other words, the MIVC problem is about finding an independent set of cardinality at most @math with maximum coverage. Since it is a generalization of the well-known Maximum Weighted Independent Set (MWIS) problem, MWBIS too does not have any constant factor polynomial time approximation algorithm assuming @math . In this paper, we study MWBIS in the context of bipartite graphs. We show that, unlike MWIS, the MIVC (and thereby the MWBIS) problem in bipartite graphs is NP-hard. Then, we show that the MWBIS problem admits a @math -factor approximation algorithm in the class of bipartite graphs, which matches the integrality gap of a natural LP relaxation.
Given a graph @math , we know that the is about finding the minimum number of vertices that cover all the edges of @math . Several variants of the VC problem has been studied in the literature. We discuss about a couple of them here. For a positive integer @math , the is about finding the minimum number of vertices that cover at least @math distinct edges of @math . In the year @math , Burroughs and Bshouty introduced and studied the problem of partial vertex cover @cite_13 . In this paper, the authors gave a @math -factor approximation algorithm by rounding fractional optimal solutions given by an LP relaxation of the problem. Bar-Yehuda in @cite_3 came up with another @math -approximation algorithm that relied on the beautiful local ratio' method. A primal-dual algorithm achieving the same approximation factor was given in @cite_5 . In @cite_14 , it was shown that the PVC problem on bipartite graphs is NP-hard.
@cite_5 @cite_14 @cite_13 @cite_3
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Given a simple undirected graph @math and a positive integer @math , the maximum vertex coverage problem (MVC) is the problem of finding a set @math of @math vertices of @math such that the number of edges having at least one endpoint in @math is as large as possible. The problem is NP-hard even in bipartite graphs, as shown in two recent papers [N. Apollonio and B. Simeone, Discrete Appl. Math., 165 (2014), pp. 37--48; G. Joret and A. Vetta, Reducing the Rank of a Matroid, preprint, arXiv:1211.4853v1 [cs.DS], 2012]. By exploiting the structure of the fractional optimal solutions of a linear programming formulation for the maximum coverage problem, we provide a @math -approximation algorithm for the problem. The algorithm immediately extends to the weighted version of MVC. A vertex cover of a graph is a subset of vertices such that each edge has at least one endpoint in the subset. Determining the minimum vertex cover is a well-known NP-complete problem in a sequential setting. Several techniques, e.g., depth-first search, a local ratio theorem, and semidefinite relaxation, have given good approximation algorithms. However, some of them cannot be applied to a distributed setting, in particular self-stabilizing algorithms. Thus only a 2-approximation solution based on a self-stabilizing maximal matching has been obviously known until now. In this paper we propose a new self-stabilizing vertex cover algorithm that achieves (2–1 Δ)-approximation ratio, where Δ is the maximum degree of a given network. We first introduce a sequential (2–1 Δ)-approximation algorithm that uses a maximal matching with the high-degree-first order of vertices. Then we present a self-stabilizing algorithm based on the same idea, and show that the output of the algorithm is the same as that of the sequential one. We present two new approximation algorithms for the problem of finding a k-node connected spanning subgraph (directed or undirected) of minimum cost. The best known approximation guarantees for this problem were @math for both directed and undirected graphs, and @math for undirected graphs with @math , where @math is the number of nodes in the input graph. Our first algorithm has approximation ratio @math , which is @math except for very large values of @math , namely, @math . This algorithm is based on a new result on @math -connected @math -critical graphs, which is of independent interest in the context of graph theory. Our second algorithm uses the primal-dual method and has approximation ratio @math for all values of @math . Combining these two gives an algorithm with approximation ratio @math , which asymptotically improves the best known approximation guarantee for directed graphs for all values of @math , and for undirected graphs for @math . Moreover, this is the first algorithm that has an approximation guarantee better than @math for all values of @math . Our approximation ratio also provides an upper bound on the integrality gap of the standard LP-relaxation. Abstract We consider the max-vertex-cover (MVC) problem, i.e., find k vertices from an undirected and edge-weighted graph G =( V , E ), where | V |= n ⩾ k , such that the total edge weight covered by the k vertices is maximized. There is a 3 4-approximation algorithm for MVC, based on a linear programming relaxation. We show that the guaranteed ratio can be improved by a simple greedy algorithm for k >(3 4) n , and a simple randomized algorithm for k >(1 2) n . Furthermore, we study a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation based approximation algorithms for MVC. We show that, for a range of k , our SDP-based algorithm achieves the best performance guarantee among the four types of algorithms mentioned in this paper.