A Sequential Algorithm for Generating Random Graphs

We present a nearly-linear time algorithm for counting and randomly generating simple graphs with a given degree sequence in a certain range. For degree sequence (d _i ) _i=1 ⁿ with maximum degree d _max?=O(m ^1/4?τ ), our algorithm generates almost uniform random graphs with that degree sequence in time O(md _max?) where $m=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i}d_{i}We present a nearly-linear time algorithm for counting and randomly generating simple graphs with a given degree sequence in a certain range. For degree sequence (d _i ) _i=1 ⁿ with maximum degree d _max=O(m ^1/4−τ ), our algorithm generates almost uniform random graphs with that degree sequence in time O(md _max) where m=\frac12?_id_im=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i}d_{i} is the number of edges in the graph and τ is any positive constant. The fastest known algorithm for uniform generation of these graphs (McKay and Wormald in J. Algorithms 11(1):52–67, 1990) has a running time of O(m ² d _max²). Our method also gives an independent proof of McKay’s estimate (McKay in Ars Combinatoria A 19:15–25, 1985) for the number of such graphs.     

Algorithmic Aspects of Acyclic Edge Colorings

Abstract. A proper coloring of the edges of a graph G is called acyclic if there is no two-colored cycle in G . The acyclic edge chromatic number of G , denoted by a'(G) , is the least number of colors in an acyclic edge coloring of G . For certain graphs G , a'(G)\geq Δ(G)+2 where Δ(G) is the maximum degree in G . It is known that a'(G)≤ Δ + 2 for almost all Δ -regular graphs, including all Δ -regular graphs whose girth is at least cΔ log Δ . We prove that determining the acyclic edge chromatic number of an arbitrary graph is an NP-complete problem. For graphs G with sufficiently large girth in terms of Δ(G) , we present deterministic polynomial-time algorithms that color the edges of G acyclically using at most Δ(G)+2 colors.     

Faster Deterministic Communication in Radio Networks

We study the communication primitives of broadcasting (one-to-all communication) and gossiping (all-to-all communication) in known topology radio networks, i.e., where for each primitive the schedule of transmissions is precomputed based on full knowledge about the size and the topology of the network. We show that gossiping can be completed in time units in any radio network of size n, diameter D, and maximum degree Δ=Ω(log n). This is an almost optimal schedule in the sense that there exists a radio network topology, specifically a Δ-regular tree, in which the radio gossiping cannot be completed in less than units of time. Moreover, we show a schedule for the broadcast task. Both our transmission schemes significantly improve upon the currently best known schedules by Gąsieniec, Peleg, and Xin (Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS PODC, pp. 129–137, 2005), i.e., a O(D+Δlog n) time schedule for gossiping and a D+O(log ³ n) time schedule for broadcast. Our broadcasting schedule also improves, for large D, a very recent O(D+log ² n) time broadcasting schedule by Kowalski and Pelc. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the proceedings of ISAAC’06. F. Cicalese supported by the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award 2004 of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. F. Manne and Q. Xin supported by the Research Council of Norway through the SPECTRUM project.     

Deterministically Isolating a Perfect Matching in Bipartite Planar Graphs

We present a deterministic Logspace procedure, which, given a bipartite planar graph on n vertices, assigns O(log n) bits long weights to its edges so that the minimum weight perfect matching in the graph becomes unique. The Isolation Lemma as described in Mulmuley et al. (Combinatorica 7(1):105–131, 1987) achieves the same for general graphs using randomness, whereas we can do it deterministically when restricted to bipartite planar graphs. As a consequence, we reduce both decision and construction versions of the perfect matching problem in bipartite planar graphs to testing whether a matrix is singular, under the promise that its determinant is 0 or 1, thus obtaining a highly parallel SPL\mathsf{SPL} algorithm for both decision and construction versions of the bipartite perfect matching problem. This improves the earlier known bounds of non-uniform SPL\mathsf{SPL} by Allender et al. (J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 59(2):164–181, 1999) and NC\mathsf{NC} ² by Miller and Naor (SIAM J. Comput. 24:1002–1017, 1995), and by Mahajan and Varadarajan (Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), pp. 351–357, 2000). It also rekindles the hope of obtaining a deterministic parallel algorithm for constructing a perfect matching in non-bipartite planar graphs, which has been open for a long time. Further we try to find the lower bound on the number of bits needed for deterministically isolating a perfect matching. We show that our particular method for isolation will require Ω(log n) bits. Our techniques are elementary.     

Quantum Algorithms for Matching Problems

We present quantum algorithms for the following matching problems in unweighted and weighted graphs with n vertices and m edges:

On the complexity of binary samples

Consider a class of binary functions h: X→{ − 1, + 1} on an interval . Define the sample width of h on a finite subset (a sample) S ⊂ X as ω _S (h) =  min _x ∈ S |ω _h (x)| where ω _h (x) = h(x) max {a ≥ 0: h(z) = h(x), x − a ≤ z ≤ x + a}. Let be the space of all samples in X of cardinality ℓ and consider sets of wide samples, i.e., hypersets which are defined as Through an application of the Sauer-Shelah result on the density of sets an upper estimate is obtained on the growth function (or trace) of the class , β > 0, i.e., on the number of possible dichotomies obtained by intersecting all hypersets with a fixed collection of samples of cardinality m. The estimate is .      

Coloring unstructured radio networks

During and immediately after their deployment, ad hoc and sensor networks lack an efficient communication scheme rendering even the most basic network coordination problems difficult. Before any reasonable communication can take place, nodes must come up with an initial structure that can serve as a foundation for more sophisticated algorithms. In this paper, we consider the problem of obtaining a vertex coloring as such an initial structure. We propose an algorithm that works in the unstructured radio network model. This model captures the characteristics of newly deployed ad hoc and sensor networks, i.e. asynchronous wake-up, no collision-detection, and scarce knowledge about the network topology. When modeling the network as a graph with bounded independence, our algorithm produces a correct coloring with O(Δ) colors in time O(Δ log n) with high probability, where n and Δ are the number of nodes in the network and the maximum degree, respectively. Also, the number of locally used colors depends only on the local node density. Graphs with bounded independence generalize unit disk graphs as well as many other well-known models for wireless multi-hop networks. They allow us to capture aspects such as obstacles, fading, or irregular signal-propagation. A preliminary version of this work has been published in [20] as Coloring Unstructured Radio Networks, In Proceedings of the 17th Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), Las Vegas, Nevada, 2005.     

Location-Oblivious Distributed Unit Disk Graph Coloring

We present the first location-oblivious distributed unit disk graph coloring algorithm having a provable performance ratio of three (i.e. the number of colors used by the algorithm is at most three times the chromatic number of the graph). This is an improvement over the standard sequential coloring algorithm that has a worst case lower bound on its performance ratio of 4−3/k (for any k>2, where k is the chromatic number of the unit disk graph achieving the lower bound) (Tsai et al., in Inf. Process. Lett. 84(4):195–199, 2002). We present a slightly better worst case lower bound on the performance ratio of the sequential coloring algorithm for unit disk graphs with chromatic number 4. Using simulation, we compare our algorithm with other existing unit disk graph coloring algorithms.     

A Simpler Linear-Time Recognition of Circular-Arc Graphs

We give a linear-time recognition algorithm for circular-arc graphs based on the algorithm of Eschen and Spinrad (Proceedings of the Fourth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), pp. 128–137, 1993) and Eschen (PhD thesis, 1997). Our algorithm both improves the time bound of Eschen and Spinrad, and fixes some flaws in it. Our algorithm is simpler than the earlier linear-time recognition algorithm of McConnell (Algorithmica 37(2):93–147, 2003), which is the only linear time recognition algorithm previously known.     

Planar and Grid Graph Reachability Problems

We study the complexity of restricted versions of s-t-connectivity, which is the standard complete problem for . In particular, we focus on different classes of planar graphs, of which grid graphs are an important special case. Our main results are:

On the Planar Piecewise Quadratic 1-Center Problem

In this paper we introduce a minimax model unifying several classes of single facility planar center location problems. We assume that the transportation costs of the demand points to the serving facility are convex functions {Q _i }, i=1,…,n, of the planar distance used. Moreover, these functions, when properly transformed, give rise to piecewise quadratic functions of the coordinates of the facility location. In the continuous case, using results on LP-type models by Clarkson (J. ACM 42:488–499, 1995), Matoušek et al. (Algorithmica 16:498–516, 1996), and the derandomization technique in Chazelle and Matoušek (J. Algorithms 21:579–597, 1996), we claim that the model is solvable deterministically in linear time. We also show that in the separable case, one can get a direct O(nlog n) deterministic algorithm, based on Dyer (Proceedings of the 8th ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry, 1992), to find an optimal solution. In the discrete case, where the location of the center (server) is restricted to some prespecified finite set, we introduce deterministic subquadratic algorithms based on the general parametric approach of Megiddo (J. ACM 30:852–865, 1983), and on properties of upper envelopes of collections of quadratic arcs. We apply our methods to solve and improve the complexity of a number of other location problems in the literature, and solve some new models in linear or subquadratic time complexity.     

Network Design with Weighted Players

We consider a model of game-theoretic network design initially studied by Anshelevich et al. (Proceedings of the 45th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), pp. 295–304, 2004), where selfish players select paths in a network to minimize their cost, which is prescribed by Shapley cost shares. If all players are identical, the cost share incurred by a player for an edge in its path is the fixed cost of the edge divided by the number of players using it. In this special case, Anshelevich et al. (Proceedings of the 45th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), pp. 295–304, 2004) proved that pure-strategy Nash equilibria always exist and that the price of stability—the ratio between the cost of the best Nash equilibrium and that of an optimal solution—is Θ(log k), where k is the number of players. Little was known about the existence of equilibria or the price of stability in the general weighted version of the game. Here, each player i has a weight w _i ≥1, and its cost share of an edge in its path equals w _i times the edge cost, divided by the total weight of the players using the edge. This paper presents the first general results on weighted Shapley network design games. First, we give a simple example with no pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. This motivates considering the price of stability with respect to α-approximate Nash equilibria—outcomes from which no player can decrease its cost by more than an α multiplicative factor. Our first positive result is that O(log w _max)-approximate Nash equilibria exist in all weighted Shapley network design games, where w _max is the maximum player weight. More generally, we establish the following trade-off between the two objectives of good stability and low cost: for every α=Ω(log w _max), the price of stability with respect to O(α)-approximate Nash equilibria is O((log W)/α), where W is the sum of the players’ weights. In particular, there is always an O(log W)-approximate Nash equilibrium with cost within a constant factor of optimal. Finally, we show that this trade-off curve is nearly optimal: we construct a family of networks without o(log w _max/ log log w _max)-approximate Nash equilibria, and show that for all α=Ω(log w _max/log log w _max), achieving a price of stability of O(log W/α) requires relaxing equilibrium constraints by an Ω(α) factor. Research of H.-L. Chen supported in part by NSF Award 0323766. Research of T. Roughgarden supported in part by ONR grant N00014-04-1-0725, DARPA grant W911NF-04-9-0001, and an NSF CAREER Award.     

Non-Cooperative Tree Creation

In this paper we consider the connection game, a simple network design game with independent selfish agents that was introduced by Anshelevich et al. (Proc. 35th Ann. ACM Symp. Theo. Comp. (STOC), pp. 511–520, 2003). Our study concerns an important subclass of tree games, in which every feasible network is guaranteed to be connected. It generalizes the class of single-source games considered by Anshelevich et al. We focus on the existence, quality, and computability of pure-strategy exact and approximate Nash equilibria. For tree connection games, in which every player holds two terminals, we show that there is a Nash equilibrium as cheap as the optimum network. In contrast, for single-source games, in which every player has at most three terminals, the price of stability is at least k−2, and it is -complete to decide the existence of a Nash equilibrium. Hence, we propose polynomial time algorithms for computing approximate Nash equilibria, which provide relaxed stability and cost efficiency guarantees. For the case of two terminals per player, there is an algorithm to find a (2+ε,1.55)-approximate Nash equilibrium. It can be generalized to an algorithm to find a (3.1+ε,1.55)-approximate Nash equilibrium for general tree connection games. This improves the guarantee of the only previous algorithm for the problem, which returns a (4.65+ε,1.55)-approximate Nash equilibrium. Tightness results for the analysis of all algorithms are derived. Our algorithms use a novel iteration technique for trees that might be of independent interest. This work has appeared in part as an extended abstract at the 31st Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2006) and the 17th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2006). Supported by DFG Research Training Group 1042 “Explorative Analysis and Visualization of Large Information Spaces”.     

Faster communication in known topology radio networks

This paper concerns the communication primitives of broadcasting (one-to-all communication) and gossiping (all-to-all communication) in known topology radio networks, i.e., where for each primitive the schedule of transmissions is precomputed in advance based on full knowledge about the size and the topology of the network. The first part of the paper examines the two communication primitives in arbitrary graphs. In particular, for the broadcast task we deliver two new results: a deterministic efficient algorithm for computing a radio schedule of length D + O(log³ n), and a randomized algorithm for computing a radio schedule of length D + O(log² n). These results improve on the best currently known D + O(log⁴ n) time schedule due to Elkin and Kortsarz (Proceedings of the 16th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 222–231, 2005). Later we propose a new (efficiently computable) deterministic schedule that uses 2D + Δlog n + O(log³ n) time units to complete the gossiping task in any radio network with size n, diameter D and max-degree Δ. Our new schedule improves and simplifies the currently best known gossiping schedule, requiring time , for any network with the diameter D = Ω(log ⁱ⁺⁴ n), where i is an arbitrary integer constant i ≥ 0, see Gąsieniec et al. (Proceedings of the 11th International Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity, vol. 3104, pp. 173–184, 2004). The second part of the paper focuses on radio communication in planar graphs, devising a new broadcasting schedule using fewer than 3D time slots. This result improves, for small values of D, on the currently best known D + O(log³ n) time schedule proposed by Elkin and Kortsarz (Proceedings of the 16th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 222–231, 2005). Our new algorithm should be also seen as a separation result between planar and general graphs with small diameter due to the polylogarithmic inapproximability result for general graphs by Elkin and Kortsarz (Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, vol. 3122, pp. 105–116, 2004; J. Algorithms 52(1), 8–25, 2004). The second author is supported in part by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation and by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Part of this research was performed while this author (Q. Xin) was a PhD student at The University of Liverpool.     

On-line coloring and cliques covering for KK s,t -free graphs

The problem of on-line coloring of an arbitrary graphs is known to be hard. Here we consider the problem of on-line coloring in the simplified situation where the input graph is KK_s,t-free. We show that the on-line coloring algorithm with the First Fit strategy of proposed by Capponi and Pilotto in [1] is the best one for KK_1,t-free graphs (t≥3). A.Capponi and C.Pilotto have shown that this algorithm achieves a competitive ratio of t−1 while we show that it is the best possible. However for the family of KK_s,t-free graphs (s≥2, t≥2) there exists no on-line coloring algorithm with a competitive function. The problem of an on-line cliques covering for these families is hard. There exists no on-line cliques covering algorithm with a competitive function for the family of KK_s,t-free graphs (s≥ 1, t≥3). The additional assumption that the input graph is given in a connected way does not help a lot and does not change our results described above.     

An Efficient Algorithm for Solving Pseudo Clique Enumeration Problem

The problem of finding dense structures in a given graph is quite basic in informatics including data mining and data engineering. Clique is a popular model to represent dense structures, and widely used because of its simplicity and ease in handling. Pseudo cliques are natural extension of cliques which are subgraphs obtained by removing small number of edges from cliques. We here define a pseudo clique by a subgraph such that the ratio of the number of its edges compared to that of the clique with the same number of vertices is no less than a given threshold value. In this paper, we address the problem of enumerating all pseudo cliques for a given graph and a threshold value. We first show that it seems to be difficult to obtain polynomial time algorithms using straightforward divide and conquer approaches. Then, we propose a polynomial time, polynomial delay in precise, algorithm based on reverse search. The time complexity for each pseudo clique is O(Δlog |V|+min {Δ ²,|V|+|E|}). Computational experiments show the efficiency of our algorithm for both randomly generated graphs and practical graphs.     

All-Pairs Shortest Paths with Real Weights in <Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis><Superscript>3</Superscript>/log <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>) Time

We describe an O(n ³/log n)-time algorithm for the all-pairs-shortest-paths problem for a real-weighted directed graph with n vertices. This slightly improves a series of previous, slightly subcubic algorithms by Fredman (SIAM J. Comput. 5:49–60, 1976), Takaoka (Inform. Process. Lett. 43:195–199, 1992), Dobosiewicz (Int. J. Comput. Math. 32:49–60, 1990), Han (Inform. Process. Lett. 91:245–250, 2004), Takaoka (Proc. 10th Int. Conf. Comput. Comb., Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., vol. 3106, pp. 278–289, Springer, 2004), and Zwick (Proc. 15th Int. Sympos. Algorithms and Computation, Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., vol. 3341, pp. 921–932, Springer, 2004). The new algorithm is surprisingly simple and different from previous ones. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proc. 9th Workshop Algorithms Data Struct. (WADS), Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., vol. 3608, pp. 318–324, Springer, 2005.     

A randomized clustering of anonymous wireless ad hoc networks with an application to the initialization problem

The Distributed Mobility-Adaptive Clustering (DMAC) due to Basagni partitions the nodes of a mobile ad hoc network into clusters, thus giving the network a hierarchical organization. This algorithm supports the mobility of the nodes, even during the cluster formation. The main feature of DMAC is that in a weighted network (in which two or more nodes cannot have the same weight), nodes have to choose the clusterheads taking into account only the node weight, i.e. the mobility when a node weight is the inverse of its speed. In our approach many nodes may have the same speed and hence the same weight. We assume that nodes have no identities and the number of nodes, say n, is the only known parameter of the network. After the randomized clustering, we show that the initialization problem can be solved in a multi-hop ad hoc wireless network of n stations in O(k ^1/2log ^1/2 k)+D _b −1+O(log (max (P _i )+log ²max (P _i )) broadcast rounds with high probability, where k is the number of clusters, D _b is the blocking diameter and max (P _i ), 1≤i≤k, is the maximum number of nodes in a cluster. Thus the initialization protocol presented here uses less broadcast rounds than the one in Ravelemanana (IEEE Trans. Parallel Distributed Syst. 18(1):17–28 2007).     

Coloring inductive graphs on-line

In this paper we consider the problem of on-line graph coloring. In an instance of on-line graph coloring, the nodes are presented one at a time. As each node is presented, its edges to previously presented nodes are also given. Each node must be assigned a color, different from the colors of its neighbors, before the next node is given. LetA(G) be the number of colors used by algorithmA on a graphG and letx(G) be the chromatic number ofG. The performance ratio of an on-line graph coloring algorithm for a class of graphsC is max_{G C(A(G)/(G))}. We consider the class ofd-inductive graphs. A graphG isd-inductive if the nodes ofG can be numbered so that each node has at mostd edges to higher-numbered nodes. In particular, planar graphs are 5-inductive, and chordal graphs arex(G)-inductive. First Fit is the algorithm that assigns each node the lowest-numbered color possible. We show that ifG isd-inductive, then First Fit usesO(d logn) colors onG. This yields an upper bound ofo(logn) on the performance ratio of First Fit on chordal and planar graphs. First Fit does as well as any on-line algorithm ford-inductive graphs: we show that, for anyd and any on-line graph coloring algorithmA, there is ad-inductive graph that forcesA to use (d logn) colors to colorG. We also examine on-line graph coloring with lookahead. An algorithm is on-line with lookaheadl, if it must color nodei after examining only the firstl+i nodes. We show that, forl/logn, the lower bound ofd logn colors still holds.This research was supported by an IBM Graduate Fellowship.     

Improved on-line broadcast scheduling with deadlines

We study an on-line broadcast scheduling problem in which requests have deadlines, and the objective is to maximize the weighted throughput, i.e., the weighted total length of the satisfied requests. For the case where all requested pages have the same length, we present an online deterministic algorithm named BAR and prove that it is 4.56-competitive. This improves the previous algorithm of (Kim, J.-H., Chwa, K.-Y. in Theor. Comput. Sci. 325(3):479–488, 2004) which is shown to be 5-competitive by (Chan, W.-T., et al. in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3106, pp. 210–218, 2004). In the case that pages may have different lengths, we give a ( )-competitive algorithm where Δ is the ratio of maximum to minimum page lengths. This improves the (4Δ+3)-competitive algorithm of (Chan, W.-T., et al. in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3106, pp. 210–218, 2004). We also prove an almost matching lower bound of Ω(Δ/log Δ). Furthermore, for small values of Δ we give better lower bounds. The work described in this paper was fully supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR, China [CityU 1198/03E, HKU 7142/03E, HKU 5172/03E], an NSF Grant of China [No. 10371094], and a Nuffield Foundation Grant of UK [NAL/01004/G].