Continuous Defensive Domination Problems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the computational complexity of a continuous facility location problem called Defensive δ-Covering, analyzing how attack and defense configurations affect problem hardness on graphs.

Contribution

It characterizes the complexity of Defensive δ-Covering under various attack and defense scenarios, introducing discretization techniques for complexity analysis.

Findings

Vertex-only attack is Σ₂^P-complete for large δ.

General attack on edges is NP-complete.

Allowing multisets can simplify attack complexity.

Abstract

The problem Defensive $\delta$-Covering, for some covering range $\delta > 0$, is a continuous facility location problem on undirected graphs where all edges have unit length. It is a generalization of Defensive Dominating Set and $\delta$-Covering. An attack and defense are sets of points, which are on vertices or on the interior of an edge. A defense counters an attack, if there is a matching of the points in the defense to the points in the attack, such that any matched points have distance at most $\delta$, and every point in the attack is matched. The task is, given a graph $G$ and numbers $\ell, k \in \mathbb N$, to find a defense of size at most $\ell$ that counters every possible attack of size at most $k$. We study the complexity of this problem in various different settings. We show that if the attack is restricted to vertices, the problem is $\Sigma^P_2$-complete for large $\delta$, but if the attack may consist of any points on the graph, it is NP-complete. Additionally, we analyze how the complexity changes if the attacks or defenses may be a multiset. If the defense is allowed to be a multiset, the complexity does not change in any case we consider, while if the attack is allowed to be a multiset, the problem often becomes easier. To show containment in the various complexity classes, we introduce a number of discretization arguments, which show that solutions with a regular structure must always exist.