English

The Hierarchical Chinese Postman Problem: the slightest disorder makes it hard, yet disconnectedness is manageable

Data Structures and Algorithms 2021-02-17 v2 Discrete Mathematics Optimization and Control

Abstract

The Hierarchical Chinese Postman Problem is finding a shortest traversal of all edges of a graph respecting precedence constraints given by a partial order on classes of edges. We show that the special case with connected classes is NP-hard even on orders decomposable into a chain and an incomparable class. For the case with linearly ordered (possibly disconnected) classes, we get 5/3-approximations and fixed-parameter algorithms by transferring results from the Rural Postman Problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.04022,
  title  = {The Hierarchical Chinese Postman Problem: the slightest disorder makes it hard, yet disconnectedness is manageable},
  author = {Vsevolod A. Afanasev and René van Bevern and Oxana Yu. Tsidulko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.04022},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Fixed Figure 4 and an argument in the proof of Lemma 3.7(iii)