Abstract
In the single-sink buy-at-bulk network design problem we are given a subset of source nodes in a weighted undirected graph: each source node wishes to send a given amount of flow to a sink node. Moreover, a set of cable types is given, each characterized by a cost per unit length and by a capacity: the ratio cost/capacity decreases from small to large cables by economies of scale. The problem is to install cables on edges at minimum cost, such that the flow from each source to the sink can be routed simultaneously. The approximation ratio of this NP-hard problem was gradually reduced from O(log2 n) to 65.49 by a long series of papers. In this paper, we design a better 24.92 approximation algorithm for this problem.
This work has been partially supported by the Sixth Framework Programme of the EU under Contract Number 507613 (Network of Excellence “EuroNGI: Designing and Engineering of the Next Generation Internet”) and by MIUR, under Project ALGO-NEXT.
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Grandoni, F., Italiano, G.F. (2006). Improved Approximation for Single-Sink Buy-at-Bulk. In: Asano, T. (eds) Algorithms and Computation. ISAAC 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4288. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11940128_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11940128_13
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