מושגי ליבה
The authors present the first sublinear factor approximation algorithms for the directed buy-at-bulk spanner problem, which unifies the buy-at-bulk network design and directed spanner problems. The algorithms handle distance constraints and allow for negative edge lengths.
תקציר
The authors study the directed buy-at-bulk spanner problem, which aims to find a minimum-cost routing solution for network design problems that capture economies of scale, while satisfying demands and distance constraints for terminal pairs.
Key highlights:
- For Unit-demand Buy-at-Bulk Spanner on [poly(n)]±, the authors present a polynomial-time randomized algorithm with an ˜O(n^{4/5+ε}) approximation ratio, while satisfying the distance constraints with high probability.
- For Buy-at-Bulk Spanner on R, the authors present a polynomial-time randomized algorithm with an ˜O(k^{1/2+ε}) approximation ratio, where k is the number of terminal pairs. This can be improved to an ˜O(kε) approximation for the single-source problem. The algorithm may slightly violate the distance constraints.
- The authors introduce the notion of distance-constrained junction trees, which extends the concept of junction trees used for approximating Steiner forests and spanners to handle both buy-at-bulk costs and distance constraints.
- The authors design an FPTAS for the resource-constrained shortest path problem with negative consumption, which is a key subroutine for their algorithms.
The authors' results unify and generalize previous work on buy-at-bulk network design and directed spanners, by allowing for distance constraints and negative edge lengths.