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Faisal N. Abu-Khzam

Publications and source records attributed to Faisal N. Abu-Khzam.

26 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

On the Complexity of Various Parameterizations of Common Induced Subgraph Isomorphism

In the Maximum Common Induced Subgraph problem (henceforth MCIS), given two graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$, one looks for a graph with the maximum number of vertices being both an induced subgraph of $G_1$ and $G_2$. MCIS is among the most studied classical NP-hard problems. It remains NP-hard on many graph classes including forests. In this paper, we study the parameterized complexity of MCIS. As a generalization of \textsc{Clique}, it is W[1]-hard parameterized by the size of the solution. Being NP-hard even on forests, most structural parameterizations are intractable. One has to go as far as parameterizing by the size of the minimum vertex cover to get some tractability. Indeed, when parameterized by $k := \text{vc}(G_1)+\text{vc}(G_2)$ the sum of the vertex cover number of the two input graphs, the problem was shown to be fixed-parameter tractable, with an algorithm running in time $2^{O(k \log k)}$. We complement this result by showing that, unless the ETH fails, it cannot be solved in time $2^{o(k \log k)}$. This kind of tight lower bound has been shown for a few problems and parameters but, to the best of our knowledge, not for the vertex cover number. We also show that MCIS does not have a polynomial kernel when parameterized by $k$, unless $NP \subseteq \mathsf{coNP}/poly$. Finally, we study MCIS and its connected variant MCCIS on some special graph classes and with respect to other structural parameters.

cs.DS↗

On the Complexity of Multi-Parameterized Cluster Editing

The Cluster Editing problem seeks a transformation of a given undirected graph into a disjoint union of cliques via a minimum number of edge additions or deletions. A multi-parameterized version of the problem is studied, featuring a number of input parameters that bound the amount of both edge-additions and deletions per single vertex, as well as the size of a clique-cluster. We show that the problem remains NP-hard even when only one edge can be deleted and at most two edges can be added per vertex. However, the new formulation allows us to solve Cluster Editing (exactly) in polynomial time when the number of edge-edit operations per vertex is smaller than half the minimum cluster size. In other words, Correlation Clustering can be solved efficiently when the number of false positives/negatives per single data element is expected to be small compared to the minimum cluster size. As a byproduct, we obtain a kernelization algorithm that delivers linear-size kernels when the two edge-edit bounds are small constants.

cs.DS↗

Approximation and Heuristic Algorithms for Computing Backbones in Asymmetric Ad-Hoc Networks

We consider the problem of dominating set-based virtual backbone used for routing in asymmetric wireless ad-hoc networks. These networks have non-uniform transmission ranges and are modeled using the well-established disk graphs. The corresponding graph theoretic problem seeks a strongly connected dominating-absorbent set of minimum cardinality in a digraph. A subset of nodes in a digraph is a strongly connected dominating-absorbent set if the subgraph induced by these nodes is strongly connected and each node in the graph is either in the set or has both an in-neighbor and an out-neighbor in it. Distributed algorithms for this problem are of practical significance due to the dynamic nature of ad-hoc networks. We present a first distributed approximation algorithm, with a constant approximation factor and O(Diam) running time, where Diam is the diameter of the graph. Moreover we present a simple heuristic algorithm and conduct an extensive simulation study showing that our heuristic outperforms previously known approaches for the problem.

cs.NI↗

Partitioning a Graph into Disjoint Cliques and a Triangle-free Graph

A graph $G = (V, E)$ is \emph{partitionable} if there exists a partition $\{A, B\}$ of $V$ such that $A$ induces a disjoint union of cliques and $B$ induces a triangle-free graph. In this paper we investigate the computational complexity of deciding whether a graph is partitionable. The problem is known to be $\NP$-complete on arbitrary graphs. Here it is proved that if a graph $G$ is bull-free, planar, perfect, $K_4$-free or does not contain certain holes then deciding whether $G$ is partitionable is $\NP$-complete. This answers an open question posed by Thomass{é}, Trotignon and Vuškovi{ć}. In contrast a finite list of forbidden induced subgraphs is given for partitionable cographs.

cs.CC↗

Data Reductions and Combinatorial Bounds for Improved Approximation Algorithms

Kernelization algorithms in the context of Parameterized Complexity are often based on a combination of reduction rules and combinatorial insights. We will expose in this paper a similar strategy for obtaining polynomial-time approximation algorithms. Our method features the use of approximation-preserving reductions, akin to the notion of parameterized reductions. We exemplify this method to obtain the currently best approximation algorithms for \textsc{Harmless Set}, \textsc{Differential} and \textsc{Multiple Nonblocker}, all of them can be considered in the context of securing networks or information propagation.

cs.DS↗

A Hybrid Graph Representation for Exact Graph Algorithms

Many exact search algorithms for NP-hard graph problems adopt the old Davis-Putman branch-and-reduce paradigm. The performance of these algorithms often suffers from the increasing number of graph modifications, such as vertex/edge deletions, that reduce the problem instance and have to be "taken back" frequently during the search process. We investigate practical implementation-based aspects of exact graph algorithms by providing a simple hybrid graph representation that trades space for time to address the said take-back challenge. Experiments on three well studied problems show consistent significant improvements over classical methods.

cs.DS↗

An Easy-to-use Scalable Framework for Parallel Recursive Backtracking

Supercomputers are equipped with an increasingly large number of cores to use computational power as a way of solving problems that are otherwise intractable. Unfortunately, getting serial algorithms to run in parallel to take advantage of these computational resources remains a challenge for several application domains. Many parallel algorithms can scale to only hundreds of cores. The limiting factors of such algorithms are usually communication overhead and poor load balancing. Solving NP-hard graph problems to optimality using exact algorithms is an example of an area in which there has so far been limited success in obtaining large scale parallelism. Many of these algorithms use recursive backtracking as their core solution paradigm. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, easy-to-use, scalable framework for transforming almost any recursive backtracking algorithm into a parallel one. Our framework incurs minimal communication overhead and guarantees a load-balancing strategy that is implicit, i.e., does not require any problem-specific knowledge. The key idea behind this framework is the use of an indexed search tree approach that is oblivious to the problem being solved. We test our framework with parallel implementations of algorithms for the well-known Vertex Cover and Dominating Set problems. On sufficiently hard instances, experimental results show linear speedups for thousands of cores, reducing running times from days to just a few minutes.

cs.DC↗