Covering graphs with few complete bipartite subgraphs

Abstract

Given a graph and an integer k, the biclique cover problem asks whether the edge-set of the given graph can be covered with at most k bicliques (complete bipartite subgraphs); the biclique vertex-cover problem asks whether the vertex-set of the given graph can be covered with at most k bicliques. Both problems are known to be NP-complete even if the given graph is bipartite. In this paper we investigate these two problems in the framework of parameterized complexity: do the problems become easier if k is assumed to be small? We show that, considering k as the parameter, the first problem is fixed-parameter tractable, while the second one is not fixed-parameter tractable unless P = NP. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.