Approximation Schemes for Orienteering and Deadline TSP in Doubling Metrics

In this paper we look at various extensions of the classic Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) on graphs with bounded doubling dimension and bounded treewidth and present approximation schemes for them. Suppose we are given a weighted graph G = (V,E) with a start node s ∈ V, distances on the edges d:E → ℚ^+ and integer k. In k-stroll problem the goal is to find a path from s of minimum length that visits at least k vertices. In k-path we are given an additional end node t ∈ V and the path is supposed to go from s to t. The dual problem to k-stroll is the rooted orienteering in which instead of k we are given a budget B and the goal is to find a walk of length at most B starting at s that visits as many vertices as possible. In the point-to-point orienteering (P2P orienteering) we are given start and end nodes s,t and the walk is supposed to start at s and end at t. In the deadline TSP (which generalizes P2P orienteering) we are given a deadline D(v) for each v ∈ V and the goal is to find a walk starting at s that visits as many vertices as possible before their deadline (where the visit time of a node is the distance travelled from s to that node). The best approximation for rooted orienteering (or P2P orienteering) is (2+ε)-approximation [Chekuri et al., 2012] and O(log n)-approximation for deadline TSP [Nikhil Bansal et al., 2004]. For Euclidean metrics of fixed dimension, Chen and Har-Peled present [Chen and Har-Peled, 2008] a PTAS for rooted orienteering. There is no known approximation scheme for deadline TSP for any metric (not even trees). Our main result is the first approximation scheme for deadline TSP on metrics with bounded doubling dimension (which includes Euclidean metrics). To do so we first we present a quasi-polynomial time approximation scheme for k-path and P2P orienteering on such metrics. More specifically, if G is a metric with doubling dimension κ and aspect ratio Δ, we present a (1+ε)-approximation that runs in time n^{O((logΔ/ε) ^{2κ+1})}. Building upon these, we obtain an approximation scheme for deadline TSP when the distances and deadlines are integer which runs in time n^{O((log Δ/ε) ^{2κ+2})}. The same approach also implies a bicriteria (1+ε,1+ε)-approximation for deadline TSP for when distances and deadlines are in ℚ^+. For graphs with bounded treewidth ω we show how to solve k-path and P2P orienteering exactly in polynomial time and a (1+ε)-approximation for deadline TSP in time n^O((ωlogΔ/ε)²).

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