Variable Sized Online Interval Coloring with Bandwidth

摘要

We consider online coloring of intervals with bandwidth in a setting where colors have variable capacities. Whenever the algorithm opens a new color, it must choose the capacity for that color and cannot change it later. A set of intervals can be assigned the same color a of capacity C_a if the sum of bandwidths of intervals at each point does not exceed C_a. The goal is to minimize the total capacity of all the colors used. We consider the bounded model, where all capacities must be chosen in the range (0, 1), and the unbounded model, where the algorithm may use colors of any positive capacity. For the absolute competitive ratio, we give an upper bound of 14 and a lower bound of 4.59 for the bounded model, and an upper bound of 4 and a matching lower bound of 4 for the unbounded model. We also consider the offline version of these problems and show that whereas the unbounded model is polynomially solvable, the bounded model is NP-hard in the strong sense and admits a 3.6-approximation algorithm.