Precoloring extension with demands on paths

Let $G$ be a graph with a set of precolored vertices, and let us be given an integer distance parameter $d$ and a set of integer demands $d_1,\dots,d_c$. The Distance Precoloring Extension with Demands (DPED) problem is to compute a vertex $c$-coloring of $G$ such that the following three conditions hold: (i) the resulting coloring respects the colors of the precolored vertices, (ii) the distance of two vertices of the same color is at least $d$, and (iii) the number of vertices colored by color $i$ is exactly $d_i$. This problem is motivated by a program scheduling in commercial broadcast channels with constraints on content repetition and placement, which leads precisely to the DPED problem for paths. In this paper, we study DPED on paths and present a polynomial time exact algorithm when precolored vertices are restricted to the two ends of the path and devise an approximation algorithm for DPED with an additive approximation factor polynomially bounded by $d$ and the number of precolored vertices. Then, we prove that the Distance Precoloring Extension problem on paths, a less restrictive version of DPED without the demand constraints, and then DPED itself, is NP-complete. Motivated by this result, we further study the parameterized complexity of DPED on paths. We establish that the DPED problem on paths is $W[1]$-hard when parameterized by the number of colors and the distance. On the positive side, we devise a fixed parameter tractable (FPT) algorithm for DPED on paths when the number of colors, the distance, and the number of precolored vertices are considered as the parameters. Moreover, we prove that Distance Precoloring Extension is FPT parameterized by the distance. As a byproduct, we also obtain several results for the Distance List Coloring problem on paths.