We describe a 3/2-approximation algorithm, \lse, for computing a b-edgecover
of minimum weight in a graph with weights on the edges.
The b-edgecover problem is a generalization of the better-known Edge Cover problem in graphs,
where the objective is to choose a subset C of edges in the graph such that
at least a specified number b(v) of edges in C are incident on each vertex v.
In the weighted b-edgecover problem, we minimize the sum of the weights of the edges in C.
We prove that the Locally Subdominant edge (LSE) algorithm computes the same b-edge cover as the one obtained by the Greedy algorithm for the problem.
However, the Greedy algorithm requires edges to be sorted
by their effective weights, and these weights need to be updated after each iteration.
These requirements make the Greedy algorithm sequential and impractical for massive graphs.
The LSE algorithm avoids the sorting step, and is amenable for parallelization.
We implement the algorithm on a serial machine and compare its performance against a
collection of approximation algorithms for the b-edge cover problem.
Our results show that the algorithm is 3 to 5 times faster than the
Greedy algorithm on a serial processor.
The approximate edge covers obtained by the LSE algorithm have weights
greater by at most 17% of the optimal weight for problems where
we could compute the latter.
We also investigate the relationship between the b-edge cover and the b-matching problems,
show that the latter has a faster implementation since edge weights are static in this
algorithm, and obtain a heuristic solution for the former from the latter.
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A Parallel 2/3-Approximation Algorithm for Vertex-Weighted Matching
We consider the maximum vertex-weighted matching problem (MVM), in which non-negative weights are assigned to the vertices of a graph, and the weight of a matching is the sum of the weights of the matched vertices. Although exact algorithms for MVM are faster than exact algorithms for the maximum edge-weighted matching problem, there are graphs on which these exact algorithms could take hundreds of hours. For a natural number k, we design a k/(k + 1)approximation algorithm for MVM on non-bipartite graphs that updates the matching along certain short paths in the graph: either augmenting paths of length at most 2k + 1 or weight-increasing paths of length at most 2k. The choice of k = 2 leads to a 2/3-approximation algorithm that computes nearly optimal weights fast. This algorithm could be initialized with a 2/3-approximate maximum cardinality matching to reduce its runtime in practice. A 1/2-approximation algorithm may be obtained using k = 1, which is faster than the 2/3-approximation algorithm but it computes lower weights. The 2/3-approximation algorithm has time complexity O(Δ2m) while the time complexity of the 1/2-approximation algorithm is O(Δm), where m is the number of edges and Δ is the maximum degree of a vertex. Results from our serial implementations show that on average the 1/2-approximation algorithm runs faster than the Suitor algorithm (currently the fastest 1/2-approximation algorithm) while the 2/3-approximation algorithm runs as fast as the Suitor algorithm but obtains higher weights for the matching.
One advantage of the proposed algorithms is that they are well-suited for parallel implementation since they can process vertices to match in any order. The 1/2- and 2/3-approximation algorithms have been implemented on a shared memory parallel computer, and both approximation algorithms obtain good speedups, while the former algorithm runs faster on average than the parallel Suitor algorithm. Care is needed to design the parallel algorithm to avoid cyclic waits, and we prove that it is live-lock free.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1637534
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10181551
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- SIAM 2020 Workshop on Combinatorial Scientific Computing
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 12-21
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611976229.2
