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An o(log2 k)-approximation algorithm for the k-vertex connected spanning subgraph problem

Published: 17 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

We present an O(log n• log k)-approximation algorithm for the problem of finding k-vertex connected spanning subgraph of minimum cost, where n is the number of vertices in the input graph, and k is the connectivity requirement. Our algorithm works for both directed and undirected graphs. The best known approximation guarantees for these problems are O(ln k• min{√k,n/n-k ln k}) by Kortsarz and Nutov, and O(ln{k}) in the case of undirected graphs where n≥ 6k2 by Cheriyan, Vempala, and Vetta. Our algorithm is the first that has a polylogarithmic guarantee for all values of k. Combining our algorithm with the algorithm of Kortsarz and Nutov in case of small k, e.g., k<n/2, we have an O(log2 k)-approximation algorithm. As in previous work, we use the Frank-Tardos algorithm for finding k-outconnected subgraphs as a subroutine. However, with a structural lemmas that we proved, we are able to show that we need only partial solutions returned by the Frank-Tardos algorithm; thus, we can avoid paying the whole cost of the optimal solution every time the algorithm is applied.

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cover image ACM Conferences
STOC '08: Proceedings of the fortieth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
May 2008
712 pages
ISBN:9781605580470
DOI:10.1145/1374376
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 17 May 2008

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Author Tags

  1. approximation algorithms for NP-hard problems
  2. k-connected spanning subgraphs
  3. network design

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STOC '08
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STOC '08: Symposium on Theory of Computing
May 17 - 20, 2008
British Columbia, Victoria, Canada

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STOC '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 80 of 325 submissions, 25%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,469 of 4,586 submissions, 32%

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  • (2016)Sparse Subgraphs for 2-Connectivity in Directed GraphsProceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms - Volume 968510.1007/978-3-319-38851-9_11(150-166)Online publication date: 5-Jun-2016
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  • (2011)An improved approximation algorithm for minimum-cost subset k-connectivityProceedings of the 38th international colloquim conference on Automata, languages and programming - Volume Part I10.5555/2027127.2027130(13-24)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2011
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