Set Covering with Ordered Replacement -- Additive and Multiplicative Gaps

TL;DR

This paper studies set covering problems with a specific replacement property, establishing bounds on their integrality gaps and approximation algorithms, especially for variants related to bin packing.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for set covering with ordered replacement, providing polylogarithmic bounds on additive gaps and efficient approximation algorithms.

Findings

Polylogarithmic upper bound on the additive integrality gap.

Polynomial time additive approximation algorithm under certain conditions.

Applicable to many variants of bin packing with ordered replacement.

Abstract

We consider set covering problems where the underlying set system satisfies a particular replacement property w.r.t. a given partial order on the elements: Whenever a set is in the set system then a set stemming from it via the replacement of an element by a smaller element is also in the set system. Many variants of BIN PACKING that have appeared in the literature are such set covering problems with ordered replacement. We provide a rigorous account on the additive and multiplicative integrality gap and approximability of set covering with replacement. In particular we provide a polylogarithmic upper bound on the additive integrality gap that also yields a polynomial time additive approximation algorithm if the linear programming relaxation can be efficiently solved. We furthermore present an extensive list of covering problems that fall into our framework and consequently have polylogarithmic additive gaps as well.