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Approximation Algorithms for Certain Network Improvement Problems

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Abstract

We study budget constrained network upgrading problems. Such problems aim at finding optimal strategies for improving a network under some cost measure subject to certain budget constraints. Given an edge weighted graph G = (V, E), in the edge based upgrading model, it is assumed that each edge e of the given network also has an associated function ce (t) that specifies the cost of upgrading the edge by an amount t. A reduction strategy specifies for each edge e the amount by which the length ℓ(e) is to be reduced. In the node based upgrading model, a node v can be upgraded at an expense of c(v). Such an upgrade reduces the delay of each edge incident on v. For a given budget B, the goal is to find an improvement strategy such that the total cost of reduction is at most the given budget B and the cost of a subgraph (e.g. minimum spanning tree) under the modified edge lengths is the best over all possible strategies which obey the budget constraint.

After providing a brief overview of the models and definitions of the various problems considered, we present several new results on the complexity and approximability of network improvement problems.

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Krumke, S.O., Marathe, M.V., Noltemeier, H. et al. Approximation Algorithms for Certain Network Improvement Problems. Journal of Combinatorial Optimization 2, 257–288 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009798010579

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009798010579

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