Models and heuristic algorithms for a weighted vertex coloring problem

We consider a weighted version of the well-known Vertex Coloring Problem (VCP) in which each vertex i of a graph G has associated a positive weight w _i . Like in VCP, one is required to assign a color to each vertex in such a way that colors on adjacent vertices are different, and the objective is to minimize the sum of the costs of the colors used. While in VCP the cost of each color is equal to one, in the Weighted Vertex Coloring Problem (WVCP) the cost of each color depends on the weights of the vertices assigned to that color, and it equals the maximum of these weights. WVCP is known to be NP-hard and arises in practical scheduling applications, where it is also known as Scheduling on a Batch Machine with Job Compatibilities. We propose three alternative Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulations for WVCP: one is used to derive, dropping integrality requirement for the variables, a tight lower bound on the solution value, while a second one is used to derive a 2-phase heuristic algorithm, also embedding fast refinement procedures aimed at improving the quality of the solutions found. Computational results on a large set of instances from the literature are reported.     

Numerical experiences with graph coloring algorithms

We consider the problem to color the vertices of a graph with a minimal number of colors. Sequential vertex (Sv) algorithms are mostly used for approximate solutions. For the selection of the colors all the approximation Sv-algorithms proposed in literature use the Min rule. In this paper a look-ahead rule is applied to determine a most ‘suitable’ color. Furthermore, the influence of the vertex order at the beginning of the Sv algorithm (Lf or Sl) in investigated. The tests are made on a sample of 3000 random graphs with up to 300 vertices.     

An evolutionary approach for bandwidth multicoloring problems

In this paper we consider some generalizations of the vertex coloring problem, where distance constraints are imposed between adjacent vertices (bandwidth coloring problem) and each vertex has to be colored with more than one color (bandwidth multicoloring problem). We propose an evolutionary metaheuristic approach for the first problem, combining an effective tabu search algorithm with population management procedures. The approach can be applied to the second problem as well, after a simple transformation. Computational results on instances from the literature show that the overall algorithm is able to produce high quality solutions in a reasonable amount of time, outperforming the most effective algorithms proposed for the bandwidth coloring problem, and improving the best known solution of many instances of the bandwidth multicoloring problem.     

A simple branching scheme for vertex coloring problems

We present a branching scheme for some vertex coloring problems based on a new graph operator called extension. The extension operator is used to generalize the branching scheme proposed by Zykov for the basic problem to a broad class of coloring problems, such as graph multicoloring, where each vertex requires a multiplicity of colors, graph bandwidth coloring, where the colors assigned to adjacent vertices must differ by at least a given distance, and graph bandwidth multicoloring, which generalizes both the multicoloring and the bandwidth coloring problems. We report some computational evidence of the effectiveness of the new branching scheme.     

D(β)-vertex-distinguishing total coloring of graphs

A new concept of the D(β)-vertex-distinguishing total coloring of graphs, i.e., the proper total coloring such that any two vertices whose distance is not larger than β have different color sets, where the color set of a vertex is the set composed of all colors of the vertex and the edges incident to it, is proposed in this paper. The D(2)-vertex-distinguishing total colorings of some special graphs are discussed, meanwhile, a conjecture and an open problem are presented.     

几类特殊Corona图的b-染色数与b-连续性研究

在一个图G的正常k染色中,如果每一个颜色类中都至少存在一个顶点,使得其在其它的k-1个颜色类中都至少有一个邻居,则称这样的正常k染色为b-染色.一个图G的b-染色数是最大的正整数k,使得用k种颜色能够对G进行b-染色,用b(G)来表示.如果对于任意的正整数k:χ(G)≤k≤b(G),用k种颜色可以对图G进行b-染色,则称图G是b-连续的.设G1与G2为任意图,称图G=G_1·G_2为图G_1与G_2的Corona图,其中G包含G_1的一个拷贝,包含G_2的|V(G_1)|个拷贝,且G_1的第i个顶点与G_2的第i个拷贝的所有顶点都邻接.研究了路图与路图、星形图以及轮图所构成的Corona图P_n·P_m、P_n·K_(1,m)以及P_n·W_(m+1)的m-度,b-染色数与b-连续性.     

外平面图的有界染色

图G的k-有界染色是图G的一个最多有k个顶点染同一种颜色的顶点染色．图 G的k-有界染色数Xk(G)是指对G进行k-有界染色用的最少颜色数．本文给出了n个顶点的外平面图能用[n/k]种颜色k-有界染色的一些充分条件．     

Facial unique-maximum colorings of plane graphs with restriction on big vertices

A facial unique-maximum coloring of a plane graph is a proper coloring of the vertices using positive integers such that each face has a unique vertex that receives the maximum color in that face. Fabrici and Göring (2016) proposed a strengthening of the Four Color Theorem conjecturing that all plane graphs have a facial unique-maximum coloring using four colors. This conjecture has been disproven for general plane graphs and it was shown that five colors suffice. In this paper we show that plane graphs, where vertices of degree at least four induce a star forest, are facially unique-maximum 4-colorable. This improves a previous result for subcubic plane graphs by Andova et al. (2018). We conclude the paper by proposing some problems.     

List precoloring extension in planar graphs

A celebrated result of Thomassen states that not only can every planar graph be colored properly with five colors, but no matter how arbitrary palettes of five colors are assigned to vertices, one can choose a color from the corresponding palette for each vertex so that the resulting coloring is proper. This result is referred to as 5-choosability of planar graphs. Albertson asked whether Thomassen’s theorem can be extended by precoloring some vertices which are at a large enough distance apart in a graph. Here, among others, we answer the question in the case when the graph does not contain short cycles separating precolored vertices and when there is a “wide” Steiner tree containing all the precolored vertices.     

The edge chromatic number of a directed/mixed multigraph

We consider colorings of the directed and undirected edges of a mixed multigraph G by an ordered set of colors. We color each undirected edge in one color and each directed edge in two colors, such that the color of the first half of a directed edge is smaller than the color of the second half. The colors used at the same vertex are all different. A bound for the minimum number of colors needed for such colorings is obtained. In the case where G has only directed edges, we provide a polynomal algorithm for coloring G with a minimum number of colors. An unsolved problem is formulated. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 31: 267–273, 1999     

An exact approach for the Vertex Coloring Problem

Given an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$, the Vertex Coloring Problem (VCP) requires to assign a color to each vertex in such a way that colors on adjacent vertices are different and the number of colors used is minimized. In this paper, we present an exact algorithm for the solution of VCP based on the well-known Set Covering formulation of the problem. We propose a Branch-and-Price algorithm embedding an effective heuristic from the literature and some methods for the solution of the slave problem, as well as two alternative branching schemes. Computational experiments on instances from the literature show the effectiveness of the algorithm, which is able to solve, for the first time to proven optimality, five of the benchmark instances in the literature, and reduce the optimality gap of many others.     

A solitaire game played on 2-colored graphs

We introduce a solitaire game played on a graph. Initially one disk is placed at each vertex, one face green and the other red, oriented with either color facing up. Each move of the game consists of selecting a vertex whose disk shows green, flipping over the disks at neighboring vertices, and deleting the selected vertex. The game is won if all vertices are eliminated. We derive a simple parity-based necessary condition for winnability of a given game instance. By studying graph operations that construct new graphs from old ones, we obtain broad classes of graphs where this condition also suffices, thus characterizing the winnable games on such graphs. Concerning two familiar (but narrow) classes of graphs, we show that for trees a game is winnable if and only if the number of green vertices is odd, and for n-cubes a game is winnable if and only if the number of green vertices is even and not all vertices have the same color. We provide a linear-time algorithm for deciding winnability for games on maximal outerplanar graphs. We reduce the decision problem for winnability of a game on an arbitrary graph G to winnability of games on its blocks, and to winnability on homeomorphic images of G obtained by contracting edges at 2-valent vertices.     

Sum Multicoloring of Graphs

Scheduling dependent jobs on multiple machines is modeled by the graph multicoloring problem. In this paper we consider the problem of minimizing the average completion time of all jobs. This is formalized as the sum multicoloring problem: Given a graph and the number of colors required by each vertex, find a multicoloring which minimizes the sum of the largest colors assigned to the vertices. It reduces to the known sum coloring problem when each vertex requires exactly one color.This paper reports a comprehensive study of the sum multicoloring problem, treating three models: with and without preemptions, as well as co-scheduling where jobs cannot start while others are running. We establish a linear relation between the approximability of the maximum independent set problem and the approximability of the sum multicoloring problem in all three models, via a link to the sum coloring problem. Thus, for classes of graphs for which the independent set problem is ρ-approximable, we obtain O(ρ)-approximations for preemptive and co-scheduling sum multicoloring and O(ρ log n)-approximation for nonpreemptive sum multicoloring. In addition, we give constant ratio approximations for a number of fundamental classes of graphs, including bipartite, line, bounded degree, and planar graphs.     

D(β)-vertex-distinguishing total coloring of graphs

A new concept of the D(β)-vertex-distinguishing total coloring of graphs, i.e., the proper total coloring such that any two vertices whose distance is not larger than β have different color sets, where the color set of a vertex is the set composed of all colors of the vertex and the edges incident to it, is proposed in this paper. The D(2)-vertex-distinguishing total colorings of some special graphs are discussed, meanwhile, a conjecture and an open problem are presented.     

Coloring mixed hypertrees

A mixed hypergraph is a triple (V,C,D) where V is its vertex set and C and D are families of subsets of V, called C-edges and D-edges, respectively. For a proper coloring, we require that each C-edge contains two vertices with the same color and each D-edge contains two vertices with different colors. The feasible set of a mixed hypergraph is the set of all k's for which there exists a proper coloring using exactly k colors. A hypergraph is a hypertree if there exists a tree such that the edges of the hypergraph induce connected subgraphs of the tree.We prove that feasible sets of mixed hypertrees are gap-free, i.e., intervals of integers, and we show that this is not true for precolored mixed hypertrees. The problem to decide whether a mixed hypertree can be colored by k colors is NP-complete in general; we investigate complexity of various restrictions of this problem and we characterize their complexity in most of the cases.     

Recognizing decomposable graphs

A graph is called decomposable if its vertices can be colored red and blue in such a way that each color appears on at least one vertex but each vertex v has at most one neighbor having a different color from v. We point out a simple and efficient algorithm for recognizing decomposable graphs with maximum degree at most 3 and prove that recognizing decomposable graphs with maximum degree 4 is an NP-complete problem.     

Coloring permutation graphs in parallel

A coloring of a graph G is an assignment of colors to its vertices so that no two adjacent vertices have the same color. We study the problem of coloring permutation graphs using certain properties of the lattice representation of a permutation and relationships between permutations, directed acyclic graphs and rooted trees having specific key properties. We propose an efficient parallel algorithm which colors an n-node permutation graph in O(log² n) time using O(n²/log n) processors on the CREW PRAM model. Specifically, given a permutation π we construct a tree T^*[π], which we call coloring-permutation tree, using certain combinatorial properties of π. We show that the problem of coloring a permutation graph is equivalent to finding vertex levels in the coloring-permutation tree.     

A Reduction of the Anticoloring Problem to Connected Graphs

An anticoloring of a graph is a coloring of some of the vertices, such that no two adjacent vertices are colored in distinct colors. The anticoloring problem seeks, roughly speaking, for such colorings with many vertices colored in each color. We show that, to solve the anticoloring problem with two colors for general graphs, it suffices to solve it for connected graphs.     

Vertex-distinguishing IE-total Colorings of Complete Bipartite Graphs K8,n

Let G be a simple graph. An IE-total coloring f of G is a coloring of the vertices and edges of G so that no two adjacent vertices receive the same color. For each vertex x of G, let C(x) be the set of colors of vertex x and edges incident to x under f. For an IE-total coloring f of G using k colors, if C(u) 6= C(v) for any two different vertices u and v of G, then f is called a k-vertex-distinguishing IE-total-coloring of G or a k-VDIET coloring of G for short. The minimum number of colors required for a VDIET coloring of G is denoted by χievt(G) and is called vertex-distinguishing IE-total chromatic number or the VDIET chromatic number of G for short. The VDIET colorings of complete bipartite graphs K8,n are discussed in this paper. Particularly, the VDIET chromatic number of K8,n are obtained.     

Distributed Online Frequency Assignment in Cellular Networks

A cellular network is generally modeled as a subgraph of the triangular lattice. The distributed online frequency assignment problem can be abstracted as a multicoloring problem on a weighted graph, where the weight vector associated with the vertices models the number of calls to be served at the vertices and is assumed to change over time. In this paper, we develop a framework for studying distributed online frequency assignment in cellular networks. We present the first distributed online algorithms for this problem with proven bounds on their competitive ratios. We show a series of algorithms that use at each vertex information about increasingly larger neighborhoods of the vertex, and that achieve better competitive ratios. In contrast, we show lower bounds on the competitive ratios of some natural classes of online algorithms.