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Main Authors: Feldmann, Andreas Emil, Filtser, Arnold
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.20490
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author Feldmann, Andreas Emil
Filtser, Arnold
author_facet Feldmann, Andreas Emil
Filtser, Arnold
contents Realistic metric spaces (such as road/transportation networks) tend to be much more algorithmically tractable than general metrics. In an attempt to formalize this intuition, Abraham et~al.\ (SODA 2010, JACM 2016) introduced the notion of highway dimension. A weighted graph $G$ has highway dimension $h$ if for every ball $B$ of radius $\approx4r$, there is a hitting set of size $h$ hitting all the shortest paths of length $>r$ in $B$. Unfortunately, this definition fails to incorporate some very natural metric spaces such as the grid graph, and the Euclidean plane. We relax the definition of highway dimension by demanding to hit only approximate shortest paths. In addition to generalizing the original definition, this new definition also incorporates all doubling spaces (in particular the grid graph and the Euclidean plane). We then construct a PTAS for TSP under this new definition (improving a QPTAS w.r.t.\ the original more restrictive definition of Feldmann et~al.\ (SICOMP 2018)). Finally, we develop a basic metric toolkit for spaces with small highway dimension by constructing padded decompositions, sparse covers/partitions, and tree covers. An abundance of applications follow.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_20490
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Highway Dimension: a Metric View
Feldmann, Andreas Emil
Filtser, Arnold
Data Structures and Algorithms
Realistic metric spaces (such as road/transportation networks) tend to be much more algorithmically tractable than general metrics. In an attempt to formalize this intuition, Abraham et~al.\ (SODA 2010, JACM 2016) introduced the notion of highway dimension. A weighted graph $G$ has highway dimension $h$ if for every ball $B$ of radius $\approx4r$, there is a hitting set of size $h$ hitting all the shortest paths of length $>r$ in $B$. Unfortunately, this definition fails to incorporate some very natural metric spaces such as the grid graph, and the Euclidean plane. We relax the definition of highway dimension by demanding to hit only approximate shortest paths. In addition to generalizing the original definition, this new definition also incorporates all doubling spaces (in particular the grid graph and the Euclidean plane). We then construct a PTAS for TSP under this new definition (improving a QPTAS w.r.t.\ the original more restrictive definition of Feldmann et~al.\ (SICOMP 2018)). Finally, we develop a basic metric toolkit for spaces with small highway dimension by constructing padded decompositions, sparse covers/partitions, and tree covers. An abundance of applications follow.
title Highway Dimension: a Metric View
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.20490