Optimization Algorithms for Joint Power and Sub-Channel Allocation for NOMA-Based Maritime Communications

This paper investigates resource optimization schemes in a marine communication scenario based on non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). According to the offshore environment of the South China Sea, we first establish a Longley–Rice-based channel model. Then, the weighted achievable rate (WAR) is considered as the optimization objective to weigh the information rate and user fairness effectively. Our work introduces an improved joint power and user allocation scheme (RBPUA) based on a single resource block. Taking RBPUA as a basic module, we propose three joint multi-subchannel power and marine user allocation algorithms. The gradient descent algorithm (GRAD) is used as the reference standard for WAR optimization. The multi-choice knapsack algorithm combined with dynamic programming (MCKP-DP) obtains a WAR optimization result almost equal to that of GRAD. These two NOMA-based solutions are able to improve WAR performance by 7.47% compared with OMA. Due to the high computational complexity of the MCKP-DP, we further propose a DP-based fully polynomial-time approximation algorithm (DP-FPTA). The simulation results show that DP-FPTA can reduce the complexity by 84.3% while achieving an approximate optimized performance of 99.55%. This advantage of realizing the trade-off between performance optimization and complexity meets the requirements of practical low-latency systems.

The Traffic Grooming Problem in Optical Networks with Respect to ADMs and OADMs: Complexity and Approximation

All-optical networks transmit messages along lightpaths in which the signal is transmitted using the same wavelength in all the relevant links. We consider the problem of switching cost minimization in these networks. Specifically, the input to the problem under consideration is an optical network modeled by a graph G, a set of lightpaths modeled by paths on G, and an integer g termed the grooming factor. One has to assign a wavelength (modeled by a color) to every lightpath, so that every edge of the graph is used by at most g paths of the same color. A lightpath operating at some wavelength λ uses one Add/Drop multiplexer (ADM) at both endpoints and one Optical Add/Drop multiplexer (OADM) at every intermediate node, all operating at a wavelength of λ. Two lightpaths, both operating at the same wavelength λ, share the ADMs and OADMs in their common nodes. Therefore, the total switching cost due to the usage of ADMs and OADMs depends on the wavelength assignment. We consider networks of ring and path topology and a cost function that is a convex combination α·|OADMs|+(1−α)|ADMs| of the number of ADMs and the number of OADMs deployed in the network. We showed that the problem of minimizing this cost function is NP-complete for every convex combination, even in a path topology network with g=2. On the positive side, we present a polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the problem.

On a Greedy Approach for Genome Scaffolding

Background: Scaffolding is a bioinformatics problem aimed at completing the contig assembly process by determining the relative position and orientation of these contigs. It can be seen as a paths and cycles cover problem of a particular graph called the “scaffold graph”.Results: We provide some NP-hardness and inapproximability results on this problem. We also adapt a greedy approximation algorithm on complete graphs so that it works on a special class aiming to be close to real instances. The described algorithm is the first polynomial-time approximation algorithm designed for this problem on non-complete graphs.Conclusion: Tests on a set of simulated instances show that our algorithm provides better results than the version on complete graphs.

Efficient Algorithms for Max-Weighted Point Sweep Coverage on Lines

As an important application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), deployment of mobile sensors to periodically monitor (sweep cover) a set of points of interest (PoIs) arises in various applications, such as environmental monitoring and data collection. For a set of PoIs in an Eulerian graph, the point sweep coverage problem of deploying the fewest sensors to periodically cover a set of PoIs is known to be Non-deterministic Polynomial Hard (NP-hard), even if all sensors have the same velocity. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding the set of PoIs on a line periodically covered by a given set of mobile sensors that has the maximum sum of weight. The problem is first proven NP-hard when sensors are with different velocities in this paper. Optimal and approximate solutions are also presented for sensors with the same and different velocities, respectively. For M sensors and N PoIs, the optimal algorithm for the case when sensors are with the same velocity runs in O(MN) time; our polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the case when sensors have a constant number of velocities achieves approximation ratio 12; for the general case of arbitrary velocities, 12α and 12(1−1/e) approximation algorithms are presented, respectively, where integer α≥2 is the tradeoff factor between time complexity and approximation ratio.

Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Multiple-Arm Identification with Full-Bandit Feedback

We study the problem of stochastic multiple-arm identification, where an agent sequentially explores a size-[Formula: see text] subset of arms (also known as a super arm) from given [Formula: see text] arms and tries to identify the best super arm. Most work so far has considered the semi-bandit setting, where the agent can observe the reward of each pulled arm or assumed each arm can be queried at each round. However, in real-world applications, it is costly or sometimes impossible to observe a reward of individual arms. In this study, we tackle the full-bandit setting, where only a noisy observation of the total sum of a super arm is given at each pull. Although our problem can be regarded as an instance of the best arm identification in linear bandits, a naive approach based on linear bandits is computationally infeasible since the number of super arms [Formula: see text] is exponential. To cope with this problem, we first design a polynomial-time approximation algorithm for a 0-1 quadratic programming problem arising in confidence ellipsoid maximization. Based on our approximation algorithm, we propose a bandit algorithm whose computation time is [Formula: see text](log [Formula: see text]), thereby achieving an exponential speedup over linear bandit algorithms. We provide a sample complexity upper bound that is still worst-case optimal. Finally, we conduct experiments on large-scale data sets with more than 10[Formula: see text] super arms, demonstrating the superiority of our algorithms in terms of both the computation time and the sample complexity.

Tight Approximation for Proportional Approval Voting

In approval-based multiwinner elections, we are given a set of voters, a set of candidates, and, for each voter, a set of candidates approved by the voter. The goal is to find a committee of size k that maximizes the total utility of the voters. In this paper, we study approximability of Thiele rules, which are known to be NP-hard to solve exactly. We provide a tight polynomial time approximation algorithm for a natural class of geometrically dominant weights that includes such voting rules as Proportional Approval Voting or p-Geometric. The algorithm is relatively simple: first we solve a linear program and then we round a solution by employing a framework called pipage rounding due to Ageev and Sviridenko (2004) and Calinescu et al. (2011). We provide a matching lower bound via a reduction from the Label Cover problem. Moreover, assuming a conjecture called Gap-ETH, we show that better approximation ratio cannot be obtained even in time f(k)*pow(n,o(k)).

Approximation algorithms for tours of orientation-varying view cones

This article considers the problem of finding a shortest tour to visit viewing sets of points on a plane. Each viewing set is represented as an inverted view cone with apex angle [Formula: see text] and height [Formula: see text]. The apex of each cone is restricted to lie on the ground plane. Its orientation angle (tilt) [Formula: see text] is the angle difference between the cone bisector and the ground plane normal. This is a novel variant of the 3D Traveling Salesman Problem with Neighborhoods (TSPN) called Cone-TSPN. One application of Cone-TSPN is to compute a trajectory to observe a given set of locations with a camera: for each location, we can generate a set of cones whose apex and orientation angles [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] correspond to the camera’s field of view and tilt. The height of each cone [Formula: see text] corresponds to the desired resolution. Recently, Plonski and Isler presented an approximation algorithm for Cone-TSPN for the case where all cones have a uniform orientation angle of [Formula: see text]. We study a new variant of Cone-TSPN where we relax this constraint and allow the cones to have non-uniform orientations. We call this problem Tilted Cone-TSPN and present a polynomial-time approximation algorithm with ratio [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the set of all cone heights. We demonstrate through simulations that our algorithm can be implemented in a practical way and that by exploiting the structure of the cones we can achieve shorter tours. Finally, we present experimental results from various agriculture applications that show the benefit of considering view angles for path planning.

Inapproximability of Rank, Clique, Boolean, and Maximum Induced Matching-Widths under Small Set Expansion Hypothesis

Wu et al. (2014) showed that under the small set expansion hypothesis (SSEH) there is no polynomial time approximation algorithm with any constant approximation factor for several graph width parameters, including tree-width, path-width, and cut-width (Wu et al. 2014). In this paper, we extend this line of research by exploring other graph width parameters: We obtain similar approximation hardness results under the SSEH for rank-width and maximum induced matching-width, while at the same time we show the approximation hardness of carving-width, clique-width, NLC-width, and boolean-width. We also give a simpler proof of the approximation hardness of tree-width, path-width, and cut-widththan that of Wu et al.