We study a problem related to submodular function optimization and the exact matching problem for which we show a rather peculiar status: its natural LP-relaxation can have fractional optimal vertices, but there is always also an optimal integral vertex, which we can also compute in polynomial time. More specifically, we consider the multiplicative assignment problem with upgrades in which we are given a set of customers and suppliers and we seek to assign each customer to a different supplier. Each customer has a demand and each supplier has a regular and an upgraded cost for each unit demand provided to the respective assigned client. Our goal is to upgrade at most k suppliers and to compute an assignment in order to minimize the total resulting cost. This can be cast as the problem to compute an optimal matching in a bipartite graph with the additional constraint that we must select k edges from a certain group of edges, similar to selecting k red edges in the exact matching problem. Also, selecting the suppliers to be upgraded corresponds to maximizing a submodular set function under a cardinality constraint. Our result yields an efficient LP-based algorithm to solve our problem optimally. In addition, we also provide a purely strongly polynomial-time algorithm for it. As an application, we obtain exact algorithms for the upgrading variant of the problem to schedule jobs on identical or uniformly related machines in order to minimize their sum of completion times, i.e., where we may upgrade up to k jobs to reduce their respective processing times.

In a packing problem, we are given a collection \(I\) of \(n\) items, each one with a given profit. Our goal is to compute a maximum profit subset of these items that satisfies a given set of packing constraints which depend on the problem at hand. Several approximation algorithms for well-studied NP-hard packing problems are based on a reduction to an auxiliary (packing) problem which is then solved with a dynamic program (DP). Examples for this include approximation algorithms for Knapsack, Geometric Knapsack, Independent Set of Rectangles, and Maximum Throughput Scheduling.

We study the general scheduling problem (GSP) which generalizes and unifies several well-studied preemptive single-machine scheduling problems, such as weighted flow time, weighted sum of completion time, and minimizing the total weight of tardy jobs. We are given a set of jobs with their processing times and release times and seek to compute a (possibly preemptive) schedule for them on one machine. Each job incurs a cost that depends on its completion time in the computed schedule, as given by a separate job-dependent cost function for each job, and our objective is to minimize the total resulting cost of all jobs. The best known result for GSP is a polynomial time \(O(\log \log P)\)-approximation algorithm [Bansal and Pruhs, FOCS 2010, SICOMP 2014].

The (Non-Preemptive) Throughput Maximization problem is a natural and fundamental scheduling problem. We are given n jobs, where each job j is characterized by a processing time and a time window, contained in a global interval [0,T), during which j can be scheduled. Our goal is to schedule the maximum possible number of jobs non-preemptively on a single machine, so that no two scheduled jobs are processed at the same time. This problem is known to be strongly NP-hard. The best-known approximation algorithm for it has an approximation ratio of 1/0.6448 + ε ≈ 1.551 + ε [Im, Li, Moseley IPCO’17], improving on an earlier result in [Chuzhoy, Ostrovsky, Rabani FOCS’01]. In this paper we substantially improve the approximation factor for the problem to 4/3+ε for any constant ε>0. Using pseudo-polynomial time (nT)O(1), we improve the factor even further to 5/4+ε. Our results extend to the setting in which we are given an arbitrary number of (identical) machines.

We study the two-dimensional (geometric) knapsack problem with rotations (2DKR), in which we are given a square knapsack and a set of rectangles with associated profits. The objective is to find a maximum profit subset of rectangles that can be packed without overlap in an axis-aligned manner, possibly by rotating some rectangles by 90∘. The best-known polynomial time algorithm for the problem has an approximation ratio of 3/2+є for any constant є>0, with an improvement to 4/3+є in the cardinality case, due to Gálvez, Grandoni, Heydrich, Ingala, Khan, and Wiese (FOCS 2017, TALG 2021). Obtaining a PTAS for the problem, even in the cardinality case, has remained a major open question in the setting of multidimensional packing problems, as mentioned in the survey by Christensen, Khan, Tetali, and Pokutta (Computer Science Review, 2017).

An important objective function in the scheduling literature is to minimize the sum of weighted flow times. We are given a set of jobs, where each job is characterized by a release time, a processing time, and a weight. Our goal is to find a preemptive schedule on a single machine that minimizes the sum of the weighted flow times of the jobs, where the flow time of a job is the time between its completion time and its release time. In their breakthrough result, Batra, Garg, and Kumar [FOCS 2018] found the first pseudopolynomial-time constant-factor approximation algorithm for the problem, which was turned into a polynomial-time algorithm by Feige, Kulkarni, and Li [SODA 2019]. The resulting approximation ratio is a (not explicitly stated) constant which is at least 10,000. In this article, we improve this to a PTAS. 1 The algorithm by Batra et al. reduces the problem to Demand MultiCut on trees and solves the resulting instances via LP-rounding and a dynamic program. Instead, we first reduce the problem to a (different) geometric problem while losing only a factor \(1 + \varepsilon\) , and then solve its resulting instances exactly by a dynamic program. In particular, our reduction ensures certain structural properties, due to which we do not need LP-rounding techniques.

We consider a spatial voting model where candidates and voters are positioned in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, and each voter ranks candidates based on their proximity to the voter's ideal point. We focus on the scenario where information about voters' ideal points is incomplete; for each dimension, only an interval of possible values is known. Here, we investigate the computational complexity of determining possible winners under positional scoring rules. We show the possible winner problem in one dimension is solvable in polynomial time for all $k$-truncated voting rules with constant $k$. For some scoring rules where the problem is NP-complete, such as approval voting for any dimension or $k$-approval for $d \geq 2$, we give an FPT algorithm parameterized by the number of candidates. Finally, we classify tractable and intractable settings of the weighted possible winner problem in one dimension, resolving the complexity for all two-valued positional scoring rules when $d=1$.

Abstract In the Time-Windows Unsplittable Flow on a Path problem ( twUFP ) we are given a resource whose available amount changes over a given time interval (modeled as the edge-capacities of a given path G ) and a collection of tasks. Each task is characterized by a demand (of the considered resource), a profit, an integral processing time, and a time window. Our goal is to compute a maximum profit subset of tasks and schedule them non-preemptively within their respective time windows, such that the total demand of the tasks using each edge e is at most the capacity of e . We prove that twUFP is $$\textsf{APX}$$ APX -hard which contrasts the setting of the problem without time windows, i.e., Unsplittable Flow on a Path, for which a PTAS was recently discovered [Grandoni, Mömke, Wiese, STOC 2022]. Then, we present a quasi-polynomial-time $$2+\varepsilon $$ 2 + ε approximation for twUFP under resource augmentation. Our approximation ratio improves to $$1+\varepsilon $$ 1 + ε if all tasks’ time windows are identical. Our $$\textsf{APX}$$ APX -hardness holds also for this special case and, hence, rules out such a PTAS (and even a QPTAS, unless $$\textsf{NP}\subseteq \textrm{DTIME}(n^{\textrm{poly}(\log n)})$$ NP ⊆ DTIME ( n poly ( log n ) ) ) without resource augmentation.

In the Strip Packing (SP) problem, we are given a vertical half-strip \([0,W]\times[0,\infty)\) and a set of \( n \) axis-aligned rectangles of width at most \( W \) . The goal is to find a non-overlapping packing of all rectangles into the strip such that the height of the packing is minimized. A well-studied and frequently used practical constraint is to allow only those packings that are guillotine separable, i.e., every rectangle in the packing can be obtained by recursively applying a sequence of edge-to-edge axis-parallel cuts (guillotine cuts) that do not intersect any item of the solution. In this article, we study approximation algorithms for the Guillotine Strip Packing (GSP) problem, i.e., the SP problem where we require additionally that the packing needs to be guillotine separable. This problem generalizes the classical Bin Packing problem and also makespan minimization on identical machines, and thus it is already strongly \(\mathsf{NP}\) -hard. Moreover, due to a reduction from the Partition problem, it is \(\mathsf{NP}\) -hard to obtain a polynomial-time \((3/2-\varepsilon)\) -approximation algorithm for GSP for any \(\varepsilon > 0\) (exactly as SP ). We provide a matching polynomial time \((3/2+\varepsilon)\) -approximation algorithm for GSP. Furthermore, we present a pseudo-polynomial time \((1+\varepsilon)\) -approximation algorithm for GSP. This is surprising as it is \(\mathsf{NP}\) -hard to obtain a \((5/4-\varepsilon)\) -approximation algorithm for (general) SP in pseudo-polynomial time. Thus, our results essentially settle the approximability of GSP for both the polynomial and the pseudo-polynomial settings.

We consider a new scheduling problem on parallel identical machines in which the number of machines is initially not known, but it follows a given probability distribution. Only after all jobs are assigned to a given number of bags, the actual number of machines is revealed. Subsequently, the jobs need to be assigned to the machines without splitting the bags. This is the stochastic version of a related problem introduced by Stein and Zhong [SODA 2018, TALG 2020] and it is, for example, motivated by bundling jobs that need to be scheduled by data centers. We present two PTASs for the stochastic setting, computing job-to-bag assignments that (i) minimize the expected maximum machine load and (ii) maximize the expected minimum machine load (like in the Santa Claus problem), respectively. The former result follows by careful enumeration combined with known PTASs. For the latter result, we introduce an intricate dynamic program that we apply to a suitably rounded instance.

An important goal in algorithm design is determining the best running time for solving a problem (approximately). For some problems, we know the optimal running time, assuming certain conditional lower bounds. In this work, we study the $d$-dimensional geometric knapsack problem where we are far from this level of understanding. We are given a set of weighted d-dimensional geometric items like squares, rectangles, or hypercubes and a knapsack which is a square or a (hyper-)cube. We want to select a subset of items that fit non-overlappingly inside the knapsack, maximizing the total profit of the packed items. We make a significant step towards determining the best running time for solving these problems approximately by presenting approximation algorithms with near-linear running times for any constant dimension d and any constant parameter $ε$. For (hyper)-cubes, we present a $(1+ε)$-approximation algorithm whose running time drastically improves upon the known $(1+ε)$-approximation algorithm which has a running time where the exponent of n depends exponentially on $1/ε$ and $d$. Moreover, we present a $(2+ε)$-approximation algorithm for rectangles in the setting without rotations and a $(17/9+ε)$-approximation algorithm if we allow rotations by 90 degrees. The best known polynomial time algorithms for these settings have approximation ratios of $17/9+ε$ and $1.5+ε$, respectively, and running times in which the exponent of n depends exponentially on $1/ε$. We also give dynamic algorithms with polylogarithmic query and update times and the same approximation guarantees as the algorithms above. Key to our results is a new family of structured packings which we call easily guessable packings. They are flexible enough to guarantee profitable solutions and structured enough so that we can compute these solutions quickly.

We study the problem of stabbing rectilinear polygons, where we are given $n$ rectilinear polygons in the plane that we want to stab, i.e., we want to select horizontal line segments such that for each given rectilinear polygon there is a line segment that intersects two opposite (parallel) edges of it. Our goal is to find a set of line segments of minimum total length such that all polygons are stabbed. For the special case of rectangles, there is a $O(1)$-approximation algorithm and the problem is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard [Chan et al.]. Also, the problem admits a QPTAS [Eisenbrand et al.] and even a PTAS [Khan et al.]. However, the approximability for the setting of more general polygons, e.g., L-shapes or T-shapes, is completely open. In this paper, we characterize the conditions under which the problem admits a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm. We assume that each input polygon is composed of rectangles that are placed on top of each other such that, for each pair of adjacent edges between rectangles, one edge contains the other. We show that if all input polygons satisfy the hourglass condition, then the problem admits a QPTAS. In particular, it is thus unlikely that this case is $\mathsf{APX}$-hard. Furthermore, we show that there exists a PTAS if each input polygon is composed out of rectangles with a bounded range of widths. On the other hand, if the input polygons do not satisfy these conditions, we prove that the problem is $\mathsf{APX}$-hard, already if all input polygons have only eight edges. We remark that all polygons with fewer edges automatically satisfy the hourglass condition. On the other hand, for arbitrary rectilinear polygons we even show a lower bound of $Ω(\log n)$ for the possible approximation ratio, which implies that the best possible ratio is in $Θ(\log n)$ since the problem is a special case of Set Cover.

We study the geometric knapsack problem in which we are given a set of $d$-dimensional objects (each with associated profits) and the goal is to find the maximum profit subset that can be packed non-overlappingly into a given $d$-dimensional (unit hypercube) knapsack. Even if $d=2$ and all input objects are disks, this problem is known to be \textsf{NP}-hard [Demaine, Fekete, Lang, 2010]. In this paper, we give polynomial time $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithms for the following types of input objects in any constant dimension $d$: - disks and hyperspheres, - a class of fat convex polygons that generalizes regular $k$-gons for $k\ge 5$ (formally, polygons with a constant number of edges, whose lengths are in a bounded range, and in which each angle is strictly larger than $π/2$), - arbitrary fat convex objects that are sufficiently small compared to the knapsack. We remark that in our \textsf{PTAS} for disks and hyperspheres, we output the computed set of objects, but for a $O_\varepsilon(1)$ of them, we determine their coordinates only up to an exponentially small error. However, it is unclear whether there always exists a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximate solution that uses only rational coordinates for the disks' centers. We leave this as an open problem that is related to well-studied geometric questions in the realm of circle packing.

Smart factories have data packets with a mix of stringent and non-stringent deadlines with varying levels of importance that need to be delivered via a wireless network. However, the scheduling of packets in the wireless network is crucial to satisfy the deadlines. In this work, we propose a technique of utilizing IEEE 802.11ax, popularly known as WiFi 6, for such applications. IEEE 802.11ax has a few unique characteristics, such as specific configurations of dividing the channels into resource units (RU) for packet transmission and synchronized parallel transmissions. We model the problem of scheduling packets by assigning profit to each packet and then maximizing the sum of profits. We first show that this problem is strongly NP-Hard, and then propose an approximation algorithm with a 12-approximate algorithm. Our approximation algorithm uses a variant of local search to associate the right RU configuration to each packet and identify the duration of each parallel transmission. Finally, we extensively simulate different scenarios to show that our algorithm works better than other benchmarks.

Clustering is a fundamental problem setting with applications in many different areas. For a given set of points in a metric space and an integer k, we seek to partition the given points into k clusters. For each computed cluster, one typically defines one point as the center of the cluster. A natural objective is to minimize the sum of the cluster center's radii, where we assign the smallest radius r to each center such that each point in the cluster is at a distance of at most r from the center. The best-known polynomial time approximation ratio for this problem is 3.389. In the setting with outliers, i.e., we are given an integer m and allow up to m points that are not in any cluster, the best-known approximation factor is 12.365.

We study the two-dimensional geometric knapsack problem for convex polygons. Given a set of weighted convex polygons and a square knapsack, the goal is to select the most profitable subset of the given polygons that fits non-overlappingly into the knapsack. We allow to rotate the polygons by arbitrary angles. We present a quasi-polynomial time O (1)-approximation algorithm for the general case and a pseudopolynomial time O (1)-approximation algorithm if all input polygons are triangles, both assuming polynomially bounded integral input data. Additionally, we give a quasi-polynomial time algorithm that computes a solution of optimal weight under resource augmentation—that is, we allow to increase the size of the knapsack by a factor of 1+δ for some δ > 0 but compare ourselves with the optimal solution for the original knapsack. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first results for two-dimensional geometric knapsack in which the input objects are more general than axis-parallel rectangles or circles and in which the input polygons can be rotated by arbitrary angles.

Set cover and hitting set are fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization which are well-studied in the offline, online, and dynamic settings. We study the geometric versions of these problems and present new online and dynamic algorithms for them. In the online version of set cover (resp. hitting set), $m$ sets (resp.~$n$ points) are give $n$ points (resp.~$m$ sets) arrive online, one-by-one. In the dynamic versions, points (resp. sets) can arrive as well as depart. Our goal is to maintain a set cover (resp. hitting set), minimizing the size of the computed solution. For online set cover for (axis-parallel) squares of arbitrary sizes, we present a tight $O(\log n)$-competitive algorithm. In the same setting for hitting set, we provide a tight $O(\log N)$-competitive algorithm, assuming that all points have integral coordinates in $[0,N)^{2}$. No online algorithm had been known for either of these settings, not even for unit squares (apart from the known online algorithms for arbitrary set systems). For both dynamic set cover and hitting set with $d$-dimensional hyperrectangles, we obtain $(\log m)^{O(d)}$-approximation algorithms with $(\log m)^{O(d)}$ worst-case update time. This partially answers an open question posed by Chan et al. [SODA'22]. Previously, no dynamic algorithms with polylogarithmic update time were known even in the setting of squares (for either of these problems). Our main technical contributions are an \emph{extended quad-tree }approach and a \emph{frequency reduction} technique that reduces geometric set cover instances to instances of general set cover with bounded frequency.

In fully dynamic clustering problems, a clustering of a given data set in a metric space must be maintained while it is modified through insertions and deletions of individual points. In this paper, we resolve the complexity of fully dynamic k-center clustering against both adaptive and oblivious adversaries. Against oblivious adversaries, we present the first algorithm for fully dynamic k-center in an arbitrary metric space that maintains an optimal (2 + ε)-approximation in O(k · polylog(n, Δ)) amortized update time. Here, n is an upper bound on the number of active points at any time, and Δ is the aspect ratio of the metric space. Previously, the best known amortized update time was O(k2 · polylog(n, Δ)), and is due to Chan, Gourqin, and Sozio (2018). Moreover, we demonstrate that our runtime is optimal up to polylog(n, Δ) factors. In fact, we prove that even offline algorithms for k-clustering tasks in arbitrary metric spaces, including k-medians, k-means, and k-center, must make at least Ω(nk) distance queries to achieve any non-trivial approximation factor. This implies a lower bound of Ω(k) which holds even for the insertions-only setting.

An important objective function in the scheduling literature is to minimize the sum of weighted flow times. We are given a set of jobs, where each job is characterized by a release time, a processing time, and a weight. Our goal is to find a preemptive schedule on a single machine that minimizes the sum of the weighted flow times of the jobs, where the flow time of a job is the time between its completion time and its release time. The currently best known polynomial time algorithm for the problem is a (2+є)-approximation by Rohwedder and Wiese [STOC 2021], which builds on the prior break-through result by Batra, Garg, and Kumar [FOCS 2018] who found the first pseudo-polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithm for the problem, and on the result by Feige, Kulkarni, and Li [SODA 2019] who turned the latter into a polynomial time algorithm. However, it remains open whether the problem admits a PTAS.

We study ROUND-UFP and ROUND-SAP, two generalizations of the classical BIN PACKING problem that correspond to the unsplittable flow problem on a path (UFP) and the storage allocation problem (SAP), respectively. We are given a path with capacities on its edges and a set of tasks where for each task we are given a demand and a subpath. In ROUND-UFP, the goal is to find a packing of all tasks into a minimum number of copies (rounds) of the given path such that for each copy, the total demand of tasks on any edge does not exceed the capacity of the respective edge. In ROUND-SAP, the tasks are considered to be rectangles and the goal is to find a non-overlapping packing of these rectangles into a minimum number of rounds such that all rectangles lie completely below the capacity profile of the edges. We show that in contrast to BIN PACKING, both the problems do not admit an asymptotic polynomial-time approximation scheme (APTAS), even when all edge capacities are equal. However, for this setting, we obtain asymptotic $(2+\varepsilon)$-approximations for both problems. For the general case, we obtain an $O(\log\log n)$-approximation algorithm and an $O(\log\log\frac{1}δ)$-approximation under $(1+δ)$-resource augmentation for both problems. For the intermediate setting of the no bottleneck assumption (i.e., the maximum task demand is at most the minimum edge capacity), we obtain absolute $12$- and asymptotic $(16+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithms for ROUND-UFP and ROUND-SAP, respectively.

We study the Maximum Independent Set of Rectangles (MISR) problem, where we are given a set of axis-parallel rectangles in the plane and the goal is to select a subset of non-overlapping rectangles of maximum cardinality. In a recent breakthrough, Mitchell [46] obtained the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for MISR. His algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of 10 and it is based on a dynamic program that intuitively recursively partitions the input plane into special polygons called corner-clipped rectangles (CCRs), without intersecting certain special horizontal line segments called fences. In this paper, we present a 3-approximation algorithm for MISR which is also based on a recursive partitioning scheme. First, we use a partition into a class of axis-parallel polygons with constant complexity each that are more general than CCRs. This allows us to provide an arguably simpler analysis and at the same time already improves the approximation ratio to 6. Then, using a more elaborate charging scheme and a recursive partitioning into general axis-parallel polygons with constant complexity, we improve our approximation ratio to 3. In particular, we construct a recursive partitioning based on more general fences which can be sequences of up to O(1) line segments each. This partitioning routine and our other new ideas may be useful for future work towards a PTAS for MISR.

The unsplittable flow on a path (UFP) problem is a well-studied optimization problem, and it has applications in various settings like bandwidth allocation, caching, and scheduling. We are given a path with capacities on its edges and a set of n tasks, each of them defined via a demand, a subpath, and a profit. The goal is to select the most profitable set of tasks that together respect the edge capacities, i.e., for each edge e the total demand of the selected tasks whose subpath contains e is at most the capacity of e. The best known polynomial time approximation algorithm for UFP is a (5/3 + ∊)-approximation [Grandoni et al., STOC 2018]. It is an important open question whether the problem admits a PTAS. Informally, a task is large if its demand is at least an ∊-fraction of the capacity of some edge on its path, and small otherwise. If all tasks are large, a PTAS can be obtained via dynamic programming: intuitively each edge e is used by only O(1) relevant tasks in the optimal solution OPT. The same approach fails for small tasks since then this number can be up to Ω(n) which would yield an exponential number of states. In this paper we introduce a novel randomized sketching technique to address this issue. We model the computation of a solution as a solitary game where tasks are presented one by one to a player, who has to decide for each task i whether to select i (hence getting its profit) or not. When a small task i is selected, with some probability its demand is rounded up to some large value (and then i behaves like a large task), and otherwise down to zero (and then i can be “forgotten” afterwards), so that in expectation the demand of i does not change. The optimal strategy to play this game can be computed using similar ideas as used in the DP for large tasks. Furthermore, the expected profit of this strategy is at least as large as the profit of OPT. One complication is that the player's solution might be infeasible, e.g., when too many tasks are rounded down. Still, via probabilistic arguments, we can use it to construct a feasible UFP solution which is 1 + + ∊ < 1.269 approximate in expectation. It is potentially possible that a more sophisticated probabilistic analysis gives a PTAS for the problem. We believe that randomized sketching might turn out to be useful to address also other problems in which “large” and “small” objects interact, for example in packing, scheduling, or resource allocation settings, in particular when dynamic programming works if there are only large objects.

In the Unsplittable Flow on a Path problem (UFP) we are given a path with edge capacities, and a set of tasks where each task is characterized by a subpath, a demand, and a weight. The goal is to select a subset of tasks of maximum total weight such that the total demand of the selected tasks using each edge e is at most the capacity of e. The problem admits a QPTAS [Bansal, Chakrabarti, Epstein, Schieber, STOC'06; Batra, Garg, Kumar, Mömke, Wiese, SODA'15]. After a long sequence of improvements [Bansal, Friggstad, Khandekar, Salavatipour, SODA'09; Bonsma, Schulz, Wiese, FOCS'11; Anagnostopoulos, Grandoni, Leonardi, Wiese, SODA'14; Grandoni, Mömke, Wiese, Zhou, STOC'18], the best known polynomial time approximation algorithm for UFP has an approximation ratio of 1+1/(e+1) + epsilon < 1.269 [Grandoni, Mömke, Wiese, SODA'22]. It has been an open question whether this problem admits a PTAS. In this paper, we solve this open question and present a polynomial time (1 + epsilon)-approximation algorithm for UFP.

In two-dimensional geometric knapsack problem, we are given a set of n axis-aligned rectangular items and an axis-aligned square-shaped knapsack. Each item has integral width, integral height and an associated integral profit. The goal is to find a (non-overlapping axis-aligned) packing of a maximum profit subset of rectangles into the knapsack. A well-studied and frequently used constraint in practice is to allow only packings that are guillotine separable, i.e., every rectangle in the packing can be obtained by recursively applying a sequence of edge-to-edge axis-parallel cuts that do not intersect any item of the solution. In this paper we study approximation algorithms for the geometric knapsack problem under guillotine cut constraints. We present polynomial time (1+ε)-approximation algorithms for the cases with and without allowing rotations by 90 degrees, assuming that all input numeric data are polynomially bounded in n. In comparison, the best-known approximation factor for this setting is 3+ε [Jansen-Zhang, SODA 2004], even in the cardinality case where all items have the same profit. Our main technical contribution is a structural lemma which shows that any guillotine packing can be converted into another structured guillotine packing with almost the same profit. In this packing, each item is completely contained in one of a constant number of boxes and 𝖫-shaped regions, inside which the items are placed by a simple greedy routine. In particular, we provide a clean sufficient condition when such a packing obeys the guillotine cut constraints which might be useful for other settings where these constraints are imposed.

Given a set of n non-overlapping geometric objects, can we separate a constant fraction of them using straight-line cuts that extend from edge to edge? In 1996, Urrutia posed this question for compact convex objects. Pach and Tardos later refuted it for general line segments by constructing a family where any separable subfamily has size at most O (n^{log₃ 2}). However, for axis-parallel rectangles, they provided positive evidence, showing that an Ω(1/log n)-fraction can be separated. This problem naturally arises in geometric approximation algorithms. In particular, when restricting cuts to only orthogonal straight lines, known as a guillotine cut sequence, any bound on the separability ratio directly translates into a clean and simple dynamic programming for computing a maximum independent set of geometric objects. This paper focuses on the case when the objects are squares. For squares of arbitrary sizes, an Ω(1)-fraction can be separated (Abed et al., APPROX 2015), recently improved to 1/40 (and 1/160 ≈ 0.62% for the weighted case) (Khan and Pittu, APPROX 2020). We further improve this bound, showing that a 9/256 ≈ 3.51% can be separated for the weighted case. This result significantly narrows the possible range for squares to [3.51%, 50%]. The key to our improvement is a refined analysis of the existing framework.

Unsplittable flow on a path (UFP) is an important and well-studied problem. We are given a path with capacities on its edges, and a set of tasks where for each task we are given a demand, a subpath, and a weight. The goal is to select the set of tasks of maximum total weight whose total demands do not exceed the capacity on any edge. UFP admits an (1+ε)-approximation with a running time of n^{O_{ε}(poly(log n))}, i.e., a QPTAS {[}Bansal et al., STOC 2006; Batra et al., SODA 2015{]} and it is considered an important open problem to construct a PTAS. To this end, in a series of papers polynomial time approximation algorithms have been developed, which culminated in a (5/3+ε)-approximation {[}Grandoni et al., STOC 2018{]} and very recently an approximation ratio of (1+1/(e+1)+ε) < 1.269 {[}Grandoni et al., 2020{]}. In this paper, we address the search for a PTAS from a different angle: we present a faster (1+ε)-approximation with a running time of only n^{O_{ε}(log log n)}. We first give such a result in the relaxed setting of resource augmentation and then transform it to an algorithm without resource augmentation. For this, we present a framework which transforms algorithms for (a slight generalization of) UFP under resource augmentation in a black-box manner into algorithms for UFP without resource augmentation, with only negligible loss.

Capacitated k-median is one of the few outstanding optimization problems for which the existence of a polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithm remains an open problem. In a series of recent papers algorithms producing solutions violating either the number of facilities or the capacity by a multiplicative factor were obtained. However, to produce solutions without violations appears to be hard and potentially requires different algorithmic techniques. Notably, if parameterized by the number of facilities $k$, the problem is also $W[2]$ hard, making the existence of an exact FPT algorithm unlikely. In this work we provide an FPT-time constant factor approximation algorithm preserving both cardinality and capacity of the facilities. The algorithm runs in time $2^{\mathcal{O}(k\log k)}n^{\mathcal{O}(1)}$ and achieves an approximation ratio of $7+\varepsilon$.

Knapsack problems are among the most fundamental problems in optimization. In the Multiple Knapsack problem, we are given multiple knapsacks with different capacities and items with values and sizes. The task is to find a subset of items of maximum total value that can be packed into the knapsacks without exceeding the capacities. We investigate this problem and special cases thereof in the context of dynamic algorithms and design data structures that efficiently maintain near-optimal knapsack solutions for dynamically changing input. More precisely, we handle the arrival and departure of individual items or knapsacks during the execution of the algorithm with worst-case update time polylogarithmic in the number of items. As the optimal and any approximate solution may change drastically, we only maintain implicit solutions and support certain queries in polylogarithmic time, such as the packing of an item and the solution value. While dynamic algorithms are well-studied in the context of graph problems, there is hardly any work on packing problems and generally much less on non-graph problems. Given the theoretical interest in knapsack problems and their practical relevance, it is somewhat surprising that Knapsack has not been addressed before in the context of dynamic algorithms and our work bridges this gap.

In this paper we introduce the concept of additive approximation schemes and apply it to load balancing problems. Additive approximation schemes aim to find a solution with an absolute error in the objective of at most $εh$ for some suitable parameter $h$. In the case that the parameter $h$ provides a lower bound an additive approximation scheme implies a standard multiplicative approximation scheme and can be much stronger when $h \ll$ OPT. On the other hand, when no PTAS exists (or is unlikely to exist), additive approximation schemes can provide a different notion for approximation. We consider the problem of assigning jobs to identical machines with lower and upper bounds for the loads of the machines. This setting generalizes problems like makespan minimization, the Santa Claus problem (on identical machines), and the envy-minimizing Santa Claus problem. For the last problem, in which the objective is to minimize the difference between the maximum and minimum load, the optimal objective value may be zero and hence it is NP-hard to obtain any multiplicative approximation guarantee. For this class of problems we present additive approximation schemes for $h = p_{\max}$, the maximum processing time of the jobs. Our technical contribution is two-fold. First, we introduce a new relaxation based on integrally assigning slots to machines and fractionally assigning jobs to the slots (the slot-MILP). We identify structural properties of (near-)optimal solutions of the slot-MILP, which allow us to solve it efficiently, assuming that there are $O(1)$ different lower and upper bounds on the machine loads (which is the relevant setting for the three problems mentioned above). The second technical contribution is a local-search based algorithm which rounds a solution to the slot-MILP introducing an additive error on the target load intervals of at most $ε\cdot p_{\max}$.

Weighted flow time is a fundamental and very well-studied objective function in scheduling. In this paper, we study the setting of a single machine with preemptions.

Independent set is a fundamental problem in combinatorial optimization. While in general graphs the problem is essentially inapproximable, for many important graph classes there are approximation algorithms known in the offline setting. These graph classes include interval graphs and geometric intersection graphs, where vertices correspond to intervals/geometric objects and an edge indicates that the two corresponding objects intersect. We present dynamic approximation algorithms for independent set of intervals, hypercubes and hyperrectangles in d dimensions. They work in the fully dynamic model where each update inserts or deletes a geometric object. All our algorithms are deterministic and have worst-case update times that are polylogarithmic for constant d and ε>0, assuming that the coordinates of all input objects are in [0, N]^d and each of their edges has length at least 1. We obtain the following results: - For weighted intervals, we maintain a (1+ε)-approximate solution. - For d-dimensional hypercubes we maintain a (1+ε)2^d-approximate solution in the unweighted case and a O(2^d)-approximate solution in the weighted case. Also, we show that for maintaining an unweighted (1+ε)-approximate solution one needs polynomial update time for d ≥ 2 if the ETH holds. - For weighted d-dimensional hyperrectangles we present a dynamic algorithm with approximation ratio (1+ε)log^{d-1}N.

We study the two-dimensional geometric knapsack problem for convex polygons. Given a set of weighted convex polygons and a square knapsack, the goal is to select the most profitable subset of the given polygons that fits non-overlappingly into the knapsack. We allow to rotate the polygons by arbitrary angles. We present a quasi-polynomial time $O(1)$-approximation algorithm for the general case and a polynomial time $O(1)$-approximation algorithm if all input polygons are triangles, both assuming polynomially bounded integral input data. Also, we give a quasi-polynomial time algorithm that computes a solution of optimal weight under resource augmentation, i.e., we allow to increase the size of the knapsack by a factor of $1+δ$ for some $δ>0$ but compare ourselves with the optimal solution for the original knapsack. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first results for two-dimensional geometric knapsack in which the input objects are more general than axis-parallel rectangles or circles and in which the input polygons can be rotated by arbitrary angles.

Packing problems are an important class of optimization problems. The probably most well-known problem if this type is knapsack and many generalizations of it have been studied in the literature like Two-dimensional Geometric Knapsack (2DKP) and Unsplittable Flow on a Path (UFP). For the latter two problems, recently the first polynomial time approximation algorithms with better approximation ratios than 2 were presented [Gálvez et al., FOCS 2017][Grandoni et al., STOC 2018]. In this paper we break the barrier of 2 for the Storage Allocation Problem (SAP) which is a natural intermediate problem between 2DKP and UFP. We are given a path with capacitated edges and a set of tasks where each task has a start vertex, an end vertex, a size, and a profit. We seek to select the most profitable set of tasks that we can draw as non-overlapping rectangles underneath the capacity profile of the edges where the height of each rectangle equals the size of the corresponding task. This problem is motivated by settings of allocation resources like memory, bandwidths, etc. where each request needs a contiguous portion of the resource. The best known polynomial time approximation algorithm for SAP has an approximation ratio of 2+epsilon$ [Mömke and Wiese, ICALP 2015] and no better quasi-polynomial time algorithm is known. We present a polynomial time (63/32) < 1.969-approximation algorithm for the case of uniform edge capacities and a quasi-polynomial time (1.997)-approximation algorithm for non-uniform quasi-polynomially bounded edge capacities. Finally, we show that under slight resource augmentation we can obtain approximation ratios of 3/2 + epsilon in polynomial time and 1 + epsilon in quasi-polynomial time, both for arbitrary edge capacities.

The Unsplittable Flow Cover problem (UFP-cover) models the well-studied general caching problem and various natural resource allocation settings. We are given a path with a demand on each edge and a set of tasks, each task being defined by a subpath and a size. The goal is to select a subset of the tasks of minimum cardinality such that on each edge e the total size of the selected tasks using e is at least the demand of e. There is a polynomial time 4-approximation for the problem [Bar-Noy et al., STOC 2000] and also a QPTAS [Höhn et al., ICALP 2014]. In this paper we study fixed-parameter algorithms for the problem. We show that it is W[1]-hard but it becomes FPT if we can slightly violate the edge demands (resource augmentation) and also if there are at most k different task sizes. Then we present a parameterized approximation scheme (PAS), i.e., an algorithm with a running time of f(k)⋅ n^O_ε(1) that outputs a solution with at most (1+ε)k tasks or assert that there is no solution with at most k tasks. In this algorithm we use a new trick that intuitively allows us to pretend that we can select tasks from OPT multiple times.

In the Unsplittable Flow on a Path Cover (UFP-cover) problem we are given a path with a demand for each edge and a set of tasks where each task is defined by a subpath, a size and a cost. The goal is to select a subset of the tasks of minimum cost that together cover the demand of each edge. This problem models various resource allocation settings and also the general caching problem. The best known polynomial time approximation ratio for it is 4 [Bar-Noy et al., STOC 2000]. In this paper, we study the resource augmentation setting in which we need to cover only a slightly smaller demand on each edge than the compared optimal solution. If the cost of each task equals its size (which represents the natural bit-model in the related general caching problem) we provide a polynomial time algorithm that computes a solution of optimal cost. We extend this result to general caching and to the packing version of Unsplittable Flow on a Path in their respective natural resource augmentation settings. For the case that the cost of each task equals its "area", i.e., the product of its size and its path length, we present a polynomial time (1+ε)-approximation for UFP-cover. If additionally the edge capacities are in a constant range we compute even a solution of optimal cost and also obtain a PTAS without resource augmentation.

The area of parameterized approximation seeks to combine approximation and parameterized algorithms to obtain, e.g., (1+epsilon)-approximations in f(k,epsilon)n^O(1) time where k is some parameter of the input. The goal is to overcome lower bounds from either of the areas. We obtain the following results on parameterized approximability: - In the maximum independent set of rectangles problem (MISR) we are given a collection of n axis parallel rectangles in the plane. Our goal is to select a maximum-cardinality subset of pairwise non-overlapping rectangles. This problem is NP-hard and also W[1]-hard [Marx, ESA'05]. The best-known polynomial-time approximation factor is O(log log n) [Chalermsook and Chuzhoy, SODA'09] and it admits a QPTAS [Adamaszek and Wiese, FOCS'13; Chuzhoy and Ene, FOCS'16]. Here we present a parameterized approximation scheme (PAS) for MISR, i.e. an algorithm that, for any given constant epsilon>0 and integer k>0, in time f(k,epsilon)n^g(epsilon), either outputs a solution of size at least k/(1+epsilon), or declares that the optimum solution has size less than k. - In the (2-dimensional) geometric knapsack problem (2DK) we are given an axis-aligned square knapsack and a collection of axis-aligned rectangles in the plane (items). Our goal is to translate a maximum cardinality subset of items into the knapsack so that the selected items do not overlap. In the version of 2DK with rotations (2DKR), we are allowed to rotate items by 90 degrees. Both variants are NP-hard, and the best-known polynomial-time approximation factor is 2+epsilon [Jansen and Zhang, SODA'04]. These problems admit a QPTAS for polynomially bounded item sizes [Adamaszek and Wiese, SODA'15]. We show that both variants are W[1]-hard. Furthermore, we present a PAS for 2DKR. For all considered problems, getting time f(k,epsilon)n^O(1), rather than f(k,epsilon)n^g(epsilon), would give FPT time f'(k)n^O(1) exact algorithms by setting epsilon=1/(k+1), contradicting W[1]-hardness. Instead, for each fixed epsilon>0, our PASs give (1+epsilon)-approximate solutions in FPT time. For both MISR and 2DKR our techniques also give rise to preprocessing algorithms that take n^g(epsilon) time and return a subset of at most k^g(epsilon) rectangles/items that contains a solution of size at least k/(1+epsilon) if a solution of size k exists. This is a special case of the recently introduced notion of a polynomial-size approximate kernelization scheme [Lokshtanov et al., STOC'17].

In the Highway problem, we are given a path with n edges (the highway), and a set of m drivers, each one characterized by a subpath and a budget. For a given assignment of edge prices (the tolls), the highway owner collects from each driver the total price of the associated path when it does not exceed drivers’s budget, and zero otherwise. The goal is to choose the prices to maximize the total profit. A PTAS is known for this (strongly NP-hard) problem [Grandoni,Rothvoss-SODA'11, SICOMP'16]. In this paper we study the limited supply generalization of Highway, that incorporates capacity constraints. Here the input also includes a capacity u_e >= 0 for each edge e; we need to select, among drivers that can afford the required price, a subset such that the number of drivers that use each edge e is at most u_e (and we get profit only from selected drivers). To the best of our knowledge, the only approximation algorithm known for this problem is a folklore O(log m) approximation based on a reduction to the related Unsplittable Flow on a Path problem (UFP). The main result of this paper is a PTAS for limited supply highway. As a second contribution, we study a natural generalization of the problem where each driver i demands a different amount d_i of capacity. Using known techniques, it is not hard to derive a QPTAS for this problem. Here we present a PTAS for the case that drivers have uniform budgets. Finding a PTAS for non-uniform-demand limited supply highway is left as a challenging open problem.

We present a (1+ε)-approximation algorithm with quasi-polynomial running time for computing a maximum weight independent set of polygons from a given set of polygons in the plane. Contrasting this, the best-known polynomial time algorithm for the problem has an approximation ratio of n ε . Surprisingly, we can extend the algorithm to the problem of computing the maximum cardinality subset of the given set of polygons whose intersection graph fulfills some sparsity condition. For example, we show that one can approximate the maximum subset of polygons such that the intersection graph of the subset is planar or does not contain a cycle of length 4 (i.e., K 2,2 ). Our algorithm relies on a recursive partitioning scheme, whose backbone is the existence of balanced cuts with small complexity that intersect polygons from the optimal solution of a small total weight. For the case of large axis-parallel rectangles, we provide a polynomial time (1 + ε)-approximation for the maximum weight independent set. Specifically, we consider the problem where each rectangle has one edge whose length is at least a constant fraction of the length of the corresponding edge of the bounding box of all the input elements. This is now the most general case for which a PTAS is known, and it requires a new and involved partitioning scheme, which should be of independent interest.

For geometric optimization problems we often understand the computational complexity on a rough scale, but not very well on a finer scale. One example is the two-dimensional knapsack problem for squares. There is a polynomial time (1+ε)-approximation algorithm for it (i.e., a PTAS) but the running time of this algorithm is triple exponential in 1/ε, i.e., Ω ( n 2 2 1/ε ). A double or triple exponential dependence on 1/ε is inherent in how this and other algorithms for other geometric problems work. In this article, we present an efficient PTAS (EPTAS) for knapsack for squares, i.e., a (1+ε)-approximation algorithm with a running time of O ε (1)⋅ n O (1) . In particular, the exponent of n in the running time does not depend on ε at all! Since there can be no fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the problem (unless P = NP), this is the best kind of approximation scheme we can hope for. To achieve this improvement, we introduce two new key ideas: We present a fast method to guess the Ω (2 2 1/ε ) relatively large squares of a suitable near-optimal packing instead of using brute-force enumeration. Secondly, we introduce an indirect guessing framework to define sizes of cells for the remaining squares. In the previous PTAS, each of these steps needs a running time of Ω ( n 2 2 1/ε ) and we improve both to O ε (1)⋅ n O (1) . We complete our result by giving an algorithm for two-dimensional knapsack for rectangles under (1+ε)-resource augmentation. We improve the previous double-exponential PTAS to an EPTAS and compute even a solution with optimal weight, while the previous PTAS computes only an approximation.

Given a set of n jobs with integral release dates, processing times and weights, it is a natural and important scheduling problem to compute a schedule that minimizes the sum of the weighted flow times of the jobs. There are strong lower bounds for the possible approximation ratios. In the non-preemptive case, even on a single machine the best known result is a O(sqrt{n})-approximation which is best possible. In the preemptive case on m identical machines there is a O(log min{n/m,P})-approximation (where P denotes the maximum job size) which is also best possible. We study the problem in the parametrized setting where our parameter k is an upper bound on the maximum (integral) processing time and weight of a job, a standard parameter for scheduling problems. We present a (1+epsilon)-approximation algorithm for the preemptive and the non-preemptive case of minimizing weighted flow time on m machines with a running time of f(k,epsilon,m)* n^{O(1)}, i.e., our combined parameters are k,epsilon, and m. Key to our results is to distinguish time intervals according to whether in the optimal solution the pending jobs have large or small total weight. Depending on this we employ dynamic programming, linear programming, greedy routines, or combinations of the latter to compute the schedule for each respective interval.

We consider two optimization problems in planar graphs. In {Maximum Weight Independent Set of Objects} we are given a graph G and a family D of {objects}, each being a connected subgraph of G with a prescribed weight, and the task is to find a maximum-weight subfamily of D consisting of pairwise disjoint objects. In {Minimum Weight Distance Set Cover} we are given an edge-weighted graph G, two sets D,C of vertices of G, where vertices of D have prescribed weights, and a nonnegative radius r. The task is to find a minimum-weight subset of D such that every vertex of C is at distance at most r from some selected vertex. Via simple reductions, these two problems generalize a number of geometric optimization tasks, notably {Maximum Weight Independent Set} for polygons in the plane and {Weighted Geometric Set Cover} for unit disks and unit squares. We present {quasi-polynomial time approximation schemes} (QPTASs) for both of the above problems in planar graphs: given an accuracy parameter epsilon>0 we can compute a solution whose weight is within multiplicative factor of (1+epsilon) from the optimum in time 2^{poly(1/epsilon,log |D|)}* n^{O(1)}, where n is the number of vertices of the input graph. Our main technical contribution is to transfer the techniques used for recursive approximation schemes for geometric problems due to Adamaszek, Har-Peled, and Wiese [Adamaszek and Wiese, 2013; Adamaszek and Wiese, 2014; Sariel Har-Peled, 2014] to the setting of planar graphs. In particular, this yields a purely combinatorial viewpoint on these methods.

In the unsplittable flow on a path problem (UFP) we are given a path with edge capacities and a collection of tasks. Each task is characterized by a subpath, a profit, and a demand. Our goal is to compute a maximum profit subset of tasks such that, for each edge e, the total demand of selected tasks that use e does not exceed the capacity of e. The current best polynomial-time approximation factor for this problem is 2+є for any constant є>0 [Anagostopoulos et al.-SODA 2014]. This is the best known factor even in the case of uniform edge capacities [Călinescu et al.-IPCO 2002, TALG 2011]. These results, likewise most prior work, are based on a partition of tasks into large and small depending on their ratio of demand to capacity over their respective edges: these algorithms invoke (1+є)-approximations for large and small tasks separately.

Generalizing many well-known and natural scheduling problems, scheduling with job-specific cost functions has gained a lot of attention recently. In this setting, each job incurs a cost depending on its completion time, given by a private cost function, and one seeks to schedule the jobs to minimize the total sum of these costs. The framework captures many important scheduling objectives such as weighted flow time or weighted tardiness. Still, the general case as well as the mentioned special cases are far from being very well understood yet, even for only one machine. Aiming for better general understanding of this problem, in this paper we focus on the case of uniform job release dates on one machine for which the state of the art is a 4-approximation algorithm. This is true even for a special case that is equivalent to the covering version of the well-studied and prominent unsplittable flow on a path problem, which is interesting in its own right. For that covering problem, we present a quasi-polynomial time $$(1+\varepsilon )$$ -approximation algorithm that yields an $$(e+\varepsilon )$$ -approximation for the above scheduling problem. Moreover, for the latter we devise the best possible resource augmentation result regarding speed: a polynomial time algorithm which computes a solution with optimal cost at $$1+\varepsilon $$ speedup. Finally, we present an elegant QPTAS for the special case where the cost functions of the jobs fall into at most $$\log n$$ many classes. This algorithm allows the jobs even to have up to $$\log n$$ many distinct release dates. All proposed quasi-polynomial time algorithms require the input data to be quasi-polynomially bounded.

In the Independent Set of Convex Polygons problem we are given a set of weighted convex polygons in the plane and we want to compute a maximum weight subset of non-overlapping polygons. This is a very natural and well-studied problem with applications in many different areas. Unfortunately, there is a very large gap between the known upper and lower bounds for this problem. The best polynomial time algorithm we know has an approximation ratio of $$n^{\epsilon }$$ and the best known lower bound shows only strong $${\mathsf {NP}}$$ -hardness. In this paper we close this gap, assuming that we are allowed to shrink the polygons a little bit, by a factor $$1-\delta $$ for an arbitrarily small constant $$\delta >0$$ , while the compared optimal solution cannot do this (resource augmentation). In this setting, we improve the approximation ratio of $$n^{\epsilon }$$ to $$(1+\epsilon )$$ which matches the above lower bound that still holds if we can shrink the polygons.

We study the problem of unsplittable flow on a path (UFP), which arises naturally in many applications such as bandwidth allocation, job scheduling, and caching. Here we are given a path with nonnegative edge capacities and a set of tasks, which are characterized by a subpath, a demand, and a profit. The goal is to find the most profitable subset of tasks whose total demand does not violate the edge capacities. Not surprisingly, this problem has received a lot of attention in the research community. If the demand of each task is at most a small-enough fraction δ of the capacity along its subpath (δ- small tasks ), then it has been known for a long time [Chekuri et al., ICALP 2003] how to compute a solution of value arbitrarily close to the optimum via LP rounding. However, much remains unknown for the complementary case, that is, when the demand of each task is at least some fraction δ > 0 of the smallest capacity of its subpath (δ- large tasks ). For this setting, a constant factor approximation is known, improving on an earlier logarithmic approximation [Bonsma et al., FOCS 2011]. In this article, we present a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) for δ-large tasks, for any constant δ > 0. Key to this result is a complex geometrically inspired dynamic program. Each task is represented as a segment underneath the capacity curve, and we identify a proper maze-like structure so that each corridor of the maze is crossed by only O (1) tasks in the optimal solution. The maze has a tree topology, which guides our dynamic program. Our result implies a 2+ε approximation for UFP, for any constant ε > 0, improving on the previously best 7+ε approximation by Bonsma et al. We remark that our improved approximation algorithm matches the best known approximation ratio for the considerably easier special case of uniform edge capacities.

We study the classical scheduling problem of assigning jobs to machines in order to minimize the makespan. It is well-studied and admits an EPTAS on identical machines and a (2-1/m)-approximation algorithm on unrelated machines. In this paper we study a variation in which the input jobs are partitioned into bags and no two jobs from the same bag are allowed to be assigned on the same machine. Such a constraint can easily arise, e.g., due to system stability and redundancy considerations. Unfortunately, as we demonstrate in this paper, the techniques of the above results break down in the presence of these additional constraints. Our first result is a PTAS for the case of identical machines. It enhances the methods from the known (E)PTASs by a finer classification of the input jobs and careful argumentations why a good schedule exists after enumerating over the large jobs. For unrelated machines, we prove that there can be no (log n)^{1/4-epsilon}-approximation algorithm for the problem for any epsilon > 0, assuming that NP nsubseteq ZPTIME(2^{(log n)^{O(1)}}). This holds even in the restricted assignment setting. However, we identify a special case of the latter in which we can do better: if the same set of machines we give an 8-approximation algorithm. It is based on rounding the LP-relaxation of the problem in phases and adjusting the residual fractional solution after each phase to order to respect the bag constraints.

We study the two-dimensional geometric knapsack problem, in which we are given a set of n axis-aligned rectangular items, each one with an associated profit, and an axis-aligned square knapsack. The goal is to find a (non-overlapping) packing of a maximum profit subset of items inside the knapsack (without rotating items). The best-known polynomial-time approximation factor for this problem (even just in the cardinality case) is 2+ε [Jansen and Zhang, SODA 2004]. In this article we present a polynomial-time 17/9+ε < 1.89-approximation, which improves to 558/325+ε < 1.72 in the cardinality case. Prior results pack items into a constant number of rectangular containers that are filled via greedy strategies. We deviate from this setting and show that there exists a large profit solution where items are packed into a constant number of containers plus one L-shaped region at the boundary of the knapsack containing narrow-high items and thin-wide items. These items may interact in complex manners at the corner of the L. The best-known approximation ratio for the subproblem in the L-shaped region is 2+ε (via a trivial reduction to one-dimensional knapsack); hence, as a second major result we present a PTAS for this case that we believe might be of broader utility. We also consider the variant with rotations, where items can be rotated by 90 degrees. Again, the best-known polynomial-time approximation factor (even for the cardinality case) is 2+ε [Jansen and Zhang, SODA 2004]. We present a polynomial-time (3/2+ε)-approximation for this setting, which improves to 4/3+ε in the cardinality case.

The General Scheduling Problem (GSP) generalizes scheduling problems with sum of cost objectives such as weighted flow time and weighted tardiness. Given a set of jobs with processing times, release dates, and job dependent cost functions, we seek to find a minimum cost preemptive schedule on a single machine. The best known algorithm for this problem and also for weighted flow time/tardiness is an O(loglog P)-approximation (where P denotes the range of the job processing times), while the best lower bound shows only strong NP-hardness. When release dates are identical there is also a gap: the problem remains strongly NP-hard and the best known approximation algorithm has a ratio of e+\epsilon (running in quasi-polynomial time). We reduce the latter gap by giving a QPTAS if the numbers in the input are quasi-polynomially bounded, ruling out the existence of an APX-hardness proof unless NP\subseteq DTIME(2^polylog(n)). Our techniques are based on the QPTAS known for the UFP-Cover problem, a particular case of GSP where we must pick a subset of intervals (jobs) on the real line with associated heights and costs. If an interval is selected, its height will help cover a given demand on any point contained within the interval. We reduce our problem to a generalization of UFP-Cover and use a sophisticated divide-and-conquer procedure with interdependent non-symmetric subproblems. We also present a pseudo-polynomial time approximation scheme for two variants of UFP-Cover. For the case of agreeable intervals we give an algorithm based on a new dynamic programming approach which might be useful for other problems of this type. The second one is a resource augmentation setting where we are allowed to slightly enlarge each interval.

Unsplittable Flow on a Path (UFP) is a well-studied problem. It arises in many different settings such as bandwidth allocation, scheduling, and caching. We are given a path with capacities on the edges and a set of tasks, each of them is described by a start and an end vertex and a demand. The goal is to select as many tasks as possible such that the demand of the selected tasks using each edge does not exceed the capacity of this edge. The problem admits a QPTAS and the best known polynomial time result is a (2+epsilon)-approximation. As we prove in this paper, the problem is intractable for fixed-parameter algorithms since it is W[1]-hard. A PTAS seems difficult to construct. However, we show that if we combine the paradigms of approximation algorithms and fixed-parameter tractability we can break the mentioned boundaries. We show that on instances with |OPT|=k we can compute a (1+epsilon)-approximation in time 2^O(k log k)n^O_epsilon(1) log(u_max) (where u_max is the maximum edge capacity). To obtain this algorithm we develop new insights for UFP and enrich a recent dynamic programming framework for the problem. Our results yield a PTAS for (unweighted) UFP instances where |OPT| is at most O(log n/log log n) and they imply that the problem does not admit an EPTAS, unless W[1]=FPT.

Consider the Maximum Weight Independent Set problem for rectangles: given a family of weighted axis-parallel rectangles in the plane, find a maximum-weight subset of non-overlapping rectangles. The problem is notoriously hard both in the approximation and in the parameterized setting. The best known polynomial-time approximation algorithms achieve super-constant approximation ratios [Chalermsook & Chuzhoy, Proc. SODA 2009; Chan & Har-Peled, Discrete & Comp. Geometry, 2012], even though there is a (1+epsilon)-approximation running in quasi-polynomial time [Adamaszek & Wiese, Proc. FOCS 2013; Chuzhoy & Ene, Proc. FOCS 2016]. When parameterized by the target size of the solution, the problem is W[1]-hard even in the unweighted setting [Marx, ESA 2005]. To achieve tractability, we study the following shrinking model: one is allowed to shrink each input rectangle by a multiplicative factor 1-delta for some fixed delta > 0, but the performance is still compared against the optimal solution for the original, non-shrunk instance. We prove that in this regime, the problem admits an EPTAS with running time f(epsilon,delta) n^{O(1)}, and an FPT algorithm with running time f(k,delta) n^{O(1)}, in the setting where a maximum-weight solution of size at most k is to be computed. This improves and significantly simplifies a PTAS given earlier for this problem [Adamaszek, Chalermsook & Wiese, Proc. APPROX/RANDOM 2015], and provides the first parameterized results for the shrinking model. Furthermore, we explore kernelization in the shrinking model, by giving efficient kernelization procedures for several variants of the problem when the input rectangles are squares.

In the Unsplittable Flow on a Path problem (UFP) we are given a path with non-negative edge capacities and a set of tasks, each one characterized by a subpath, a demand, and a profit. Our goal is to select a subset of tasks of maximum total profit so that the total demand of the selected tasks on each edge does not exceed the respective edge capacity. UFP naturally captures several applications in bandwidth allocation, job scheduling, and caching. Following a sequence of improvements, the current best (polynomial time) approximation factor for UFP is 2 + ∊ [Anagnostopoulos et al. SODA'14]. UFP also admits a QPTAS [Bansal et al. STOC'06, Batra et al. SODA'15], and finding a PTAS is considered a challenging open problem. In this paper we make progress in the direction of the mentioned open problem. Informally, we introduce a technique to obtain real PTASs from PTASs with resource augmentation where edge capacities can be violated by a 1 + ∊ factor. While unfortunately we do not have a resource-augmentation PTAS for the general case of UFP, for many relevant special cases we have such an algorithm or we provide one in this paper. For example, our approach leads to a PTAS for the rooted case of UFP, where all tasks share a common edge. This is one of the simplest natural restrictions of UFP where the best-known approximation was 2 + ∊ (like for the general case). At a high level, our technique is to sacrifice a few tasks in the optimal solution (with a small loss of profit) in order to create a sufficient amount of slack capacity on each edge. This slack turns out to be large enough to substitute the additional capacity we would gain from resource augmentation. Crucial for our approach is that we obtain slack from tasks with relatively small and relatively large demand simultaneously. In all prior polynomial time approximation algorithms the sacrificed tasks came from only one of these two groups.

An important question in theoretical computer science is to determine the best possible running time for solving a problem at hand. For geometric optimization problems, we often understand their complexity on a rough scale, but not very well on a finer scale. One such example is the two-dimensional knapsack problem for squares. There is a polynomial time (1 + ∊)-approximation algorithm for it (i.e., a PTAS) but the running time of this algorithm is triple exponential in 1/e, i.e., A double or triple exponential dependence on 1/e is inherent in how this and several other algorithms for other geometric problems work. In this paper, we present an EPTAS for knapsack for squares, i.e., a (1+∊)-approximation algorithm with a running time of O∊(1) · nO(1). In particular, the exponent of n in the running time does not depend on e at all! Since there can be no FPTAS for the problem (unless P = NP) this is the best kind of approximation scheme we can hope for. To achieve this improvement, we introduce two new key ideas: We present a fast method to guess the Ω(221/∊) relatively large squares of a suitable near-optimal packing instead of using brute-force enumeration. Secondly, we introduce an indirect guessing framework to define sizes of cells for the remaining squares. In the previous PTAS each of these steps needs a running time of and we improve both to Oe(1) · nO(1). We complete our result by giving an algorithm for two-dimensional knapsack for rectangles under (1 + ∊)-resource augmentation. In this setting, we also improve the best known running time of Ω(n1/∊) to O∊(1) nO(1), and compute even a solution with optimal profit, in contrast to the best previously known polynomial time algorithm for this setting that computes only an approximation. We believe that our new techniques have the potential to be useful for other settings as well.

In the strip packing problem we are given a set of rectangular items that we want to place in a strip of given width such that we minimize the height of the obtained packing. It is a very classical two-dimensional packing problem that has received a lot of attention and it has applications in many settings such as stock-cutting and scheduling. A straight-forward reduction from Partition shows that the problem cannot be approximated with a better absolute factor than 3/2. However, this reduction requires the numeric values to be exponentially large. In this paper, we present a (1.4 + ∊)-approximation algorithm with pseudo-polynomial running time. This implies that for polynomially bounded input data the problem can be approximated with a strictly better ratio than for exponential input which is a very rare phenomenon in combinatorial optimization. Our algorithm is based on a structural lemma proving that there is a packing of height (1.4 + ∊)OPT that allows a partition of the packing area into few rectangular boxes. These boxes have the property that they decouple the packing decisions for the items that are thin and high, wide and narrow, or large in both dimensions. The interaction of these item types is typically a major problem when designing algorithms and our partition completely solves this. Particularly difficult are items that are thin and high since a single one of them can increase the optimal packing height significantly if placed wrongly and there can be up to Ω(n) of them. For those items the box partition is even fine grained enough so that all items in a box have essentially the same height. This reduces the usually difficult packing decisions for these items to a problem that can be solved easily via a pseudo-polynomial time dynamic program. The mentioned reduction from Partition also breaks down if we allow to drop a constant number of input items (while the compared optimal solution cannot do this). We show that then we can approximate the problem much better and present a polynomial time algorithm computing a packing of height at most (1 + ∊)OPT that needs to drop at most O∊(1) items.

We consider online versions of the minimum spanning tree (MST) problem and the traveling salesman problem (TSP) where recourse is allowed. The nodes of an unknown graph with metric edge cost appear one by one and must be connected in such a way that the resulting tree or tour has low cost. In the standard online setting, with irrevocable decisions, no algorithm can guarantee a constant-competitive ratio. In our model we allow recourse actions by giving a limited budget of edge rearrangements per iteration. It has been an open question for more than 20 years whether an online algorithm equipped with a constant (amortized) budget can guarantee constant-approximate solutions. As our main result, we answer this question affirmatively in an amortized setting. We introduce an algorithm that maintains a nearly optimal tree when given a constant amortized budget. Unlike in classical TSP variants, the standard double-tree and shortcutting approach does not give constant guarantees in the online setting. We propose a nontrivial robust shortcutting technique that allows translation of online MST results into TSP results at the loss of small factors.

We propose a new approach to competitive analysis in online scheduling by introducing the novel concept of competitive-ratio approximation schemes. Such a scheme algorithmically constructs an online algorithm with a competitive ratio arbitrarily close to the best possible competitive ratio for any online algorithm. We study the problem of scheduling jobs online to minimize the weighted sum of completion times on parallel, related, and unrelated machines, and we derive both deterministic and randomized algorithms that are almost best possible among all online algorithms of the respective settings. We also generalize our techniques to arbitrary monomial cost functions and apply them to the makespan objective. Our method relies on an abstract characterization of online algorithms combined with various simplifications and transformations. We also contribute algorithmic means to compute the actual value of the best possible competitive ratio up to an arbitrary accuracy. This strongly contrasts with nearly all previous manually obtained competitiveness results, and, most importantly, it reduces the search for the optimal competitive ratio to a question that a computer can answer. We believe that our concept can also be applied to many other problems and yields a new perspective on online algorithms in general.

Imagine a wooden plate with a set of non-overlapping geometric objects painted on it. How many of them can a carpenter cut out using a panel saw making guillotine cuts, i.e., only moving forward through the material along a straight line until it is split into two pieces? Already fifteen years ago, Pach and Tardos investigated whether one can always cut out a constant fraction if all objects are axis-parallel rectangles. However, even for the case of axis-parallel squares this question is still open. In this paper, we answer the latter affirmatively. Our result is constructive and holds even in a more general setting where the squares have weights and the goal is to save as much weight as possible. We further show that when solving the more general question for rectangles affirmatively with only axis-parallel cuts, this would yield a combinatorial O(1)-approximation algorithm for the Maximum Independent Set of Rectangles problem, and would thus solve a long-standing open problem. In practical applications, like the mentioned carpentry and many other settings, we can usually place the items freely that we want to cut out, which gives rise to the two-dimensional guillotine knapsack problem: Given a collection of axis-parallel rectangles without presumed coordinates, our goal is to place as many of them as possible in a square-shaped knapsack respecting the constraint that the placed objects can be separated by a sequence of guillotine cuts. Our main result for this problem is a quasi-PTAS, assuming the input data to be quasi-polynomially bounded integers. This factor matches the best known (quasi-polynomial time) result for (non-guillotine) two-dimensional knapsack.

In the Maximum Weight Independent Set of Rectangles (MWISR) problem, we are given a collection of weighted axis-parallel rectangles in the plane. Our goal is to compute a maximum weight subset of pairwise non-overlapping rectangles. Due to its various applications, as well as connections to many other problems in computer science, MWISR has received a lot of attention from the computational geometry and the approximation algorithms community. However, despite being extensively studied, MWISR remains not very well understood in terms of polynomial time approximation algorithms, as there is a large gap between the upper and lower bounds, i.e., O(log n\ loglog n) v.s. NP-hardness. Another important, poorly understood question is whether one can color rectangles with at most O(omega(R)) colors where omega(R) is the size of a maximum clique in the intersection graph of a set of input rectangles R. Asplund and Grünbaum obtained an upper bound of O(omega(R)^2) about 50 years ago, and the result has remained asymptotically best. This question is strongly related to the integrality gap of the canonical LP for MWISR. In this paper, we settle above three open problems in a relaxed model where we are allowed to shrink the rectangles by a tiny bit (rescaling them by a factor of 1-delta for an arbitrarily small constant delta > 0. Namely, in this model, we show (i) a PTAS for MWISR and (ii) a coloring with O(omega(R)) colors which implies a constant upper bound on the integrality gap of the canonical LP. For some applications of MWISR the possibility to shrink the rectangles has a natural, well-motivated meaning. Our results can be seen as an evidence that the shrinking model is a promising way to relax a geometric problem for the purpose of better algorithmic results.

We consider the two-dimensional geometric knapsack problem defined as follows. Given a collection of rectangular axis-parallel items with weights, we want to find a maximum weight subset of the items that can be packed into a rectangular knapsack, i.e., which can be assigned positions within the knapsack such that the items are pair-wise non-overlapping. The goal is to compute the optimal collection of items together with a feasible packing. The problem arises naturally in several applications, and various special cases of the problem have been studied. For the general case the best known result is a (2 + ε)-approximation algorithm, while the only hardness result is NP-hardness. Our main result is a (1 + ε)-approximation algorithm that runs in quasi-polynomial time, provided that the input data consists of (quasi-)polynomially bounded integers. We achieve this result in the setting with and without allowing rotation of the items. Our key technical contribution is to show the existence of a partition for the knapsack into a small number of rectangular boxes. Intuitively, this partition describes the segmentation of the knapsack in some near-optimal solution into large items, areas containing items that are high and thin, and areas containing items that are small and wide. Handling the interaction between these three types of items is a core bottleneck in the design of approximation algorithms for the problem and our partition allows to control this at only marginal cost. In particular, it is so powerful that we do not even need to round the sizes of the items, which is a canonical step in algorithms for geometric knapsack, geometric bin-packing, etc. Finally, we present new algorithms for twodimensional knapsack and two-dimensional bin-packing under (1 + ∊)-resource augmentation with a substantially better running time dependence on ∊ (although at the expense of requiring quasi-polynomial time). The objective value of our computed solutions is as good as the optimum without additional resources. Here we exploit a recent result showing the existence of certain low-complexity low weight separators for sets of non-overlapping rectangles.

We study the unsplittable flow on a path problem which has received a lot of attention in the research community recently. Given is a path with capacities on its edges and a set of tasks where each task is characterized by a source and a sink vertex, a demand, and a profit. The goal is to find a subset of the tasks of maximum total profit such that all task demands from this subset can be routed simultaneously without violating the capacity constraints. The best known approximation results are a quasi-polynomial time-approximation scheme if the task demands are in a quasi-polynomial range [Bansal et al., STOC 2006] and a polynomial time (2 + ∊)-approximation algorithm [Anagnostopoulos et al., SODA 2014]. Finding a PTAS for it has remained an important open question. In this paper we make progress towards this goal. When the task densities—defined as the ratio of a task's profit and demand—lie in a constant range, we obtain a PTAS. We also improve the QPTAS of Bansal et al. by removing the assumption that the demands need to lie in a quasi-polynomial range. Our third result is a PTAS for the case where we are allowed to shorten the paths of the tasks by at most an ∊-fraction. This is particularly motivated by bandwidth allocation and scheduling applications of our problem if we are allowed to slightly increase the speed of the underlying transmission link/machine. Each of these results critically uses a sparsification lemma which we believe could be of independent interest. The lemma shows that in any (optimal) solution there exists an O(∊)-fraction (measured by weight) of its tasks whose removal creates, on each edge, a slack which is at least as large as the (1/∊)th largest demand using that edge. This slack can then be used to allow slight errors when estimating or rounding quantities arising in the computation.

The Maximum Weight Independent Set of Polygons (MWISP) problem is a fundamental problem in computational geometry. Given a set of weighted polygons in the two-dimensional plane, the goal is to find a set of pairwise non-overlapping polygons with maximum total weight. Due to its wide range of applications and connections to other problems, the MWISP problem and its special cases have been extensively studied both in the approximation algorithms and the computational geometry community. Despite a lot of research, its general case is not well-understood yet. Currently the best known polynomial time algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of n∊, and it is not even clear whether the problem is APX-hard. We present a (1 + ∊)-approximation algorithm, assuming that each polygon in the input has at most a polylogarithmic number of vertices. Our algorithm has quasi-polynomial running time, i.e., it runs in time 2poly(logn,1/∊). In particular, our result implies that for this setting the problem is not APX-hard, unless NP ⊆ DTIME(2poly(logn)). We use a recently introduced framework for approximating maximum weight independent set in geometric intersection graphs. The framework has been used to construct a QPTAS in the much simpler case of axis-parallel rectangles. We extend it in two ways, to adapt it to our much more general setting. First, we show that its technical core can be reduced to the case when all input polygons are triangles. Secondly, we replace its key technical ingredient which is a method to partition the plane using only few edges such that the objects stemming from the optimal solution are evenly distributed among the resulting faces and each object is intersected only a few times. Our new procedure for this task is no more complicated than the original one and, importantly, it can handle the difficulties arising from the arbitrary angles of the input polygons. Note that already this obstacle makes the known analysis for the above framework fail. Also, in general it is not well understood how to handle this difficulty by efficient approximation algorithms.

We study the unsplittable flow on a path problem (UFP), which arises naturally in many applications such as bandwidth allocation, job scheduling, and caching. Here we are given a path with nonnegative edge capacities and a set of tasks, which are characterized by a subpath, a demand, and a profit. The goal is to find the most profitable subset of tasks whose total demand does not violate the edge capacities. Not surprisingly this problem has received a lot of attention in the research community. If the demand of each task is at most a small enough fraction δ of the capacity along its subpath (δ-small tasks), then it has been known for a long time [Chekuri et al., ICALP 2003] how to compute a solution of value arbitrarily close to the optimum via LP rounding. However, much remains unknown for the complementary case, that is, when the demand of each task is at least some fraction δ > 0 of the smallest capacity of its subpath (δ-large tasks). For this setting a constant factor approximation, improving on an earlier logarithmic approximation, was found only recently [Bonsma et al., FOCS 2011]. In this paper we present a PTAS for δ-large tasks, for any constant δ > 0. Key to this result is a complex geometrically inspired dynamic program. Each task is represented as a segment underneath the capacity curve, and we identify a proper maze-like structure so that each corridor of the maze is crossed by only O(1) tasks in the optimal solution. The maze has a tree topology, which guides our dynamic program. Our result implies a 2 + ∊ approximation for UFP, for any constant ∊ > 0, improving on the previously best 7 + ∊ approximation by Bonsma et al. We remark that our improved approximation algorithm matches the best known approximation ratio for the considerably easier special case of uniform edge capacities.

In the unsplittable flow problem on a path, we are given a capacitated path $P$ and $n$ tasks, each task having a demand, a profit, and start and end vertices. The goal is to compute a maximum profit set of tasks such that, for each edge $e$ of $P$, the total demand of selected tasks that use $e$ does not exceed the capacity of $e$. This is a well-studied problem that has been described under alternative names, such as resource allocation, bandwidth allocation, resource constrained scheduling, temporal knapsack, and interval packing. We present a polynomial time constant-factor approximation algorithm for this problem. This improves on the previous best known approximation ratio of $O(\log n)$. The approximation ratio of our algorithm is $7+\epsilon$ for any $\epsilon>0$. We introduce several novel algorithmic techniques, which might be of independent interest: a framework which reduces the problem to instances with a bounded range of capacities, and a new geometrically inspired dynamic program which solves to optimality a special case of the problem of finding a maximum weight independent set of rectangles. In the setting of resource augmentation, wherein the capacities can be slightly violated, we give a $(2+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm. In addition, we show that the problem is strongly NP-hard even if all edge capacities are equal and all demands are either 1, 2, or 3.

Real-time systems increasingly contain processing units with multiple cores. To use this additional computational power in hard deadline environments, one needs schedulability tests for task models that represent the possibilities of parallel execution of jobs of a task. A standard model is to represent a (sporadically) recurrent task by a directed a cyclic graph (DAG). The nodes of the DAG correspond to the jobs of the task. All such jobs are released simultaneously, have to be completed within some common relative deadline, and some pairs of jobs are linked by a precedence constraint, i.e., an arc of the DAG. This poses new challenges for analyzing whether a task system is feasible, in particular for the commonly used online algorithms Earliest Deadline First (EDF) and Deadline Monotonic (DM). While for ordinary sporadic tasks the required algorithmic techniques are well-understood, despite recent research much remains open in this model. In this work, we completely close the gap between the algorithmic understanding of feasibility analysis for the usual sporadic task model and the case where each sporadic task is a DAG. We show for DAG tasks that EDF has a tight speedup bound of 2 - 1/m, where m is the number of processors, while DM has a speedup bound of at most 3 - 1/m. Moreover, we present polynomial and pseudopolynomial time tests, of differing effectiveness, for determining whether a set of sporadic DAG tasks can be scheduled by EDF or DM to meet all deadlines on a specified number of processors. We remark that the effectiveness of some of our tests matches the best known algorithms for ordinary sporadic task sets, thus closing the gap.

In the Maximum Weight Independent Set of Rectangles (MWISR) problem we are given a set of n axis-parallel rectangles in the 2D-plane, and the goal is to select a maximum weight subset of pairwise non-overlapping rectangles. Due to many applications, e.g. in data mining, map labeling and admission control, the problem has received a lot of attention by various research communities. We present the first (1 + ε)-approximation algorithm for the MWISR problem with quasipolynomial running time 2poly(log n/ε). In contrast, the best known polynomial time approximation algorithms for the problem achieve superconstant approximation ratios of O(log log n) (unweighted case) and O(log n/log log n) (weighted case). Key to our results is a new geometric dynamic program which recursively subdivides the plane into polygons of bounded complexity. We provide the technical tools that are needed to analyze its performance. In particular, we present a method of partitioning the plane into small and simple areas such that the rectangles of an optimal solution are intersected in a very controlled manner. Together with a novel application of the weighted planar graph separator theorem due to Arora et al. [4] this allows us to upper bound our approximation ratio by 1 + ε. Our dynamic program is very general and we believe that it will be useful for other settings. In particular, we show that, when parametrized properly, it provides a polynomial time (1 + ε)-approximation for the special case of the MWISR problem when each rectangle is relatively large in at least one dimension. Key to this analysis is a method to tile the plane in order to approximately describe the topology of these rectangles in an optimal solution. This technique might be a useful insight to design better polynomial time approximation algorithms or even a PTAS for the MWISR problem. In particular, note that our results imply that the MWISR problem is not APX-hard, unless NP ⊆ DTIME(2polylog (n)).

We study the preemptive scheduling of real-time sporadic tasks on a uniprocessor. We consider both fixed priority (FP) scheduling as well as dynamic priority scheduling by the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) algorithm. We investigate the problems of testing schedulability and computing the response time of tasks. Generally these problems are known to be computationally intractable for task systems with constrained deadlines. In this paper, we focus on the particular case of task systems with harmonic period lengths, meaning that the periods of the tasks pair wise divide each other. This is a special case of practical relevance. We present provably efficient exact algorithms for constrained-deadline task systems with harmonic periods. In particular, we provide an exact polynomial-time algorithm for computing the response time of a task in a system with an arbitrary fixed priority order. This also implies an exact FP-schedulability test. For dynamic priority scheduling, we show how to test EDF-schedulability in polynomial time. Additionally, we give a very simple EDF-schedulability test for the simpler case where relative deadlines and periods are jointly harmonic.

We propose a new approach to competitive analysis in online scheduling by introducing the novel concept of competitive-ratio approximation schemes. Such a scheme algorithmically constructs an online algorithm with a competitive ratio arbitrarily close to the best possible competitive ratio for any online algorithm. We study the problem of scheduling jobs online to minimize the weighted sum of completion times on parallel, related, and unrelated machines, and we derive both deterministic and randomized algorithms which are almost best possible among all online algorithms of the respective settings. We also generalize our techniques to arbitrary monomial cost functions and apply them to the makespan objective. Our method relies on an abstract characterization of online algorithms combined with various simplifications and transformations. We also contribute algorithmic means to compute the actual value of the best possible competitive ratio up to an arbitrary accuracy. This strongly contrasts (nearly) all previous manually obtained competitiveness results and, most importantly, it reduces the search for the optimal competitive ratio to a question that a computer can answer. We believe that our concept can also be applied to many other problems and yields a new perspective on online algorithms in general.

A model is considered for representing recurrent precedence-constrained tasks that are to execute on multiprocessor platforms. A recurrent task is specified as a directed a cyclic graph (DAG), a period, and a relative deadline. Each vertex of the DAG represents a sequential job, while the edges of the DAG represent precedence constraints between these jobs. All the jobs of the DAG are released simultaneously and need to complete execution within the specified relative deadline of their release. The task may release jobs in this manner an unbounded number of times, with successive releases occurring at least the specified period apart. The scheduling problem is to determine whether such a recurrent task can be scheduled to always meet all deadlines upon a specified number of processors that are dedicated for the use of this task. This problem is shown to be computationally intractable, but amenable to efficient approximate solutions. EDF is shown to be a good approximate scheduling algorithm. Polynomial and pseudo-polynomial schedulability tests, of differing effectiveness, are presented for determining whether a given task can be scheduled by EDF to always meet all deadlines on a specified number of processors.

We consider several real-time scheduling problems on heterogeneous multiprocessor platforms, in which the different processors share a common memory pool. These include (i)~scheduling a collection of implicit-deadline sporadic tasks with the objective of meeting all deadlines, and (ii)~scheduling a collection of independent jobs with the objective of minimizing the make span of the schedule. Both these problems are intractable (NP-hard). For each, we derive polynomial-time algorithms for solving them approximately, and show that these algorithms have bounded deviation from optimal behavior. We also consider the problem of determining how much common memory a platform needs in order to be able to accommodate a specified real-time workload.

In this paper, we present a constant-factor approximation algorithm for the unsplittable flow problem on a path. This improves on the previous best known approximation factor of O(log n). The approximation ratio of our algorithm is 7+e for any e>;0. In the unsplittable flow problem on a path, we are given a capacitated path P and n tasks, each task having a demand, a profit, and start and end vertices. The goal is to compute a maximum profit set of tasks, such that for each edge e of P, the total demand of selected tasks that use e does not exceed the capacity of e. This is a well-studied problem that occurs naturally in various settings, and therefore it has been studied under alternative names, such as resource allocation, bandwidth allocation, resource constrained scheduling, temporal knapsack and interval packing. Polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithms for the problem were previously known only under the no-bottleneck assumption (in which the maximum task demand must be no greater than the minimum edge capacity). We introduce several novel algorithmic techniques, which might be of independent interest: a framework which reduces the problem to instances with a bounded range of capacities, and a new geometrically inspired dynamic program which solves a special case of the maximum weight independent set of rectangles problem to optimality. In addition, we show that the problem is strongly NP-hard even if all edge capacities are equal and all demands are either 1, 2, or 3.

We study the problem of maintaining connectivity in a wireless network where the network nodes are equipped with directional antennas. Nodes correspond to points on the plane and each uses a directional antenna modeled by a sector with a given angle and radius. The connectivity problem is to decide whether or not it is possible to orient the antennas so that the directed graph induced by the node transmissions is strongly connected. We present algorithms for simple polynomial-time-solvable cases of the problem, show that the problem is NP-complete in the $2$-dimensional case when the sector angle is small, and present algorithms that approximate the minimum radius to achieve connectivity for sectors with a given angle. We also discuss several extensions to related problems. To the best of our knowledge, the problem has not been studied before in the literature.