For fixed @math , we consider the task of adding to a graph @math a set of weighted shortcut edges on the same vertex set, such that the length of a shortest @math -hop path between any pair of vertices in the augmented graph is exactly the same as the original distance between these vertices in @math . A set of shortcut edges with this property is called an exact @math -hopset and may be applied in processing distance queries on graph @math . In particular, a @math -hopset directly corresponds to a distributed distance oracle known as a hub labeling. In this work, we explore centralized distance oracles based on @math -hopsets and display their advantages in several practical scenarios. In particular, for graphs of constant highway dimension, and more generally for graphs of constant skeleton dimension, we show that @math -hopsets require exponentially fewer shortcuts per node than any previously described distance oracle while incurring only a quadratic increase in the query decoding time, and actually offer a speedup when compared to simple oracles based on a direct application of @math -hopsets. Finally, we consider the problem of computing minimum-size @math -hopset (for any @math ) for a given graph @math , showing a polylogarithmic-factor approximation for the case of unique shortest path graphs. When @math , for a given bound on the space used by the distance oracle, we provide a construction of hopsets achieving polylog approximation both for space and query time compared to the optimal @math -hopset oracle given the space bound.
The notion of 2-hopset studied in this work coincides with the special case of two-hop distance labeling (also called ), where labels are constructed from hub sets: in hub-labeling, a small hub set @math is assigned to each node of a graph @math such that or any pair @math of nodes, the intersection of hub sets @math contains a node on a shortest @math path. Such a construction is proposed by @cite_5 and applies to graphs of treewidth @math with labels of @math size and allows to answer distance queries in @math time; the hub sets have a hierarchical structure, which allows for an improvement of query time to @math time by a binary search over levels. Hub labelings are the best currently known distance labelings for sparse graphs, achieving sublinear node label size @cite_6 @cite_17 , and may also be used to provide a 2-additive-approximation for distance labeling in general graphs using sublinear-space labels @cite_17 .
@cite_5 @cite_6 @cite_17
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The goal of a hub-based distance labeling scheme for a network G = (V, E) is to assign a small subset S(u) ⊆ V to each node u ∈ V, in such a way that for any pair of nodes u, v, the intersection of hub sets S(u) ∩ S(v) contains a node on the shortest uv-path. The existence of small hub sets, and consequently efficient shortest path processing algorithms, for road networks is an empirical observation. A theoretical explanation for this phenomenon was proposed by (SODA 2010) through a network parameter they called highway dimension, which captures the size of a hitting set for a collection of shortest paths of length at least r intersecting a given ball of radius 2r. In this work, we revisit this explanation, introducing a more tractable (and directly comparable) parameter based solely on the structure of shortest-path spanning trees, which we call skeleton dimension. We show that skeleton dimension admits an intuitive definition for both directed and undirected graphs, provides a way of computing labels more efficiently than by using highway dimension, and leads to comparable or stronger theoretical bounds on hub set size. A distance labeling scheme is an assignment of bit-labels to the vertices of an undirected, unweighted graph such that the distance between any pair of vertices can be decoded solely from their labels. We propose a series of new labeling schemes within the framework of so-called hub labeling (HL, also known as landmark labeling or 2-hop-cover labeling), in which each node u stores its distance to all nodes from an appropriately chosen set of hubs (S(u) V ). For a queried pair of nodes (u, v), the length of a shortest (u !- !v )-path passing through a hub node from (S(u) S(v) ) is then used as an upper bound on the distance between u and v. There has been significant success in designing highly efficient algorithms for distance and shortest-path queries in recent years; many of the state-of-the-art algorithms use the hub labeling framework. In this paper, we study the approximability of the Hub Labeling problem. We prove a hardness of Ω(log n) for Hub Labeling, matching known approximation guarantees. The hardness result applies to graphs that have multiple shortest paths between some pairs of vertices. No hardness of approximation results were known previously. Then, we focus on graphs that have a unique shortest path between each pair of vertices. This is a very natural family of graphs, and much research on the Hub Labeling problem has studied such graphs. We give an O(log D) approximation algorithm for graphs of shortest-path diameter D with unique shortest paths. In particular, we get an O(log log n) approximation for graphs of polylogarithmic diameter, while previously known algorithms gave an O(log n) approximation. Finally, we present a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) and quasi-polynomial-time algorithms for Hub Labeling on trees; additionally, we analyze a simple combinatorial heuristic for Hub Labeling on trees, proposed by Peleg in 2000. We show that this heuristic gives an approximation factor of 2. We consider how to assign labels to any undirected graph with n nodes such that, given the labels of two nodes and no other information regarding the graph, it is possible to determine the distance between the two nodes. The challenge in such a distance labeling scheme is primarily to minimize the maximum label lenght and secondarily to minimize the time needed to answer distance queries (decoding). Previous schemes have offered different trade-offs between label lengths and query time. This paper presents a simple algorithm with shorter labels and shorter query time than any previous solution, thereby improving the state-of-the-art with respect to both label length and query time in one single algorithm. Our solution addresses several open problems concerning label length and decoding time and is the first improvement of label length for more than three decades. More specifically, we present a distance labeling scheme with label size (log 3) 2 + o(n) (logarithms are in base 2) and O(1) decoding time. This outperforms all existing results with respect to both size and decoding time, including Winkler's (Combinatorica 1983) decade-old result, which uses labels of size (log 3)n and O(n log n) decoding time, and (SODA'01), which uses labels of size 11n + o(n) and O(loglog n) decoding time. In addition, our algorithm is simpler than the previous ones. In the case of integral edge weights of size at most W, we present almost matching upper and lower bounds for label sizes. For r-additive approximation schemes, where distances can be off by an additive constant r, we give both upper and lower bounds. In particular, we present an upper bound for 1-additive approximation schemes which, in the unweighted case, has the same size (ignoring second order terms) as an adjacency scheme: n 2. We also give results for bipartite graphs and for exact and 1-additive distance oracles.