Browsing by Author "Morales Bravo Camilo Ignacio"

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    A water filling primal dual algorithm for approximating non linear covering problems (2020)
    (Schloss Dagstuhl, Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, GmbH, 2020) Fielbaum, Andrés; Morales Bravo Camilo Ignacio; Verschae Tannenbaum Jose Claudio
    Obtaining strong linear relaxations of capacitated covering problems constitute a significant technical challenge even for simple settings. For one of the most basic cases, the Knapsack-Cover (Min-Knapsack) problem, the relaxation based on knapsack-cover inequalities has an integrality gap of 2. These inequalities are exploited in more general problems, many of which admit primal-dual approximation algorithms. Inspired by problems from power and transport systems, we introduce a general setting in which items can be taken fractionally to cover a given demand. The cost incurred by an item is given by an arbitrary non-decreasing function of the chosen fraction. We generalize the knapsack-cover inequalities to this setting an use them to obtain a (2+ε)-approximate primal-dual algorithm. Our procedure has a natural interpretation as a bucket-filling algorithm which effectively overcomes the difficulties implied by having different slopes in the cost functions. More precisely, when some superior segment of an item presents a low slope, it helps to increase the priority of inferior segments. We also present a rounding algorithm with an approximation guarantee of 2.We generalize our algorithm to the Unsplittable Flow-Cover problem on a line, also for the setting of fractional items with non-linear costs. For this problem we obtain a (4+ε)-approximation algorithm in polynomial time, almost matching the 4-approximation algorithm known for the classical setting.