Route-enabling graph orientation problems

Abstract

Given an undirected and edge-weighted graph G together with a set of ordered vertex-pairs, called st-pairs, we consider the problems of finding an orientation of all edges in G: min-sum orientation is to minimize the sum of the shortest directed distances between all st-pairs; and min-max orientation is to minimize the maximum shortest directed distance among all st-pairs. In this paper, we first show that both problems are strongly NP-hard for planar graphs even if all edge-weights are identical, and that both problems can be solved in polynomial time for cycles. We then consider the problems restricted to cacti, which form a graph class that contains trees and cycles but is a subclass of planar graphs. Then, min-sum orientation is solvable in polynomial time, whereas min-max orientation remains NP-hard even for two st-pairs. However, based on LP-relaxation, we present a polynomial-time 2-approximation algorithm for min-max orientation. Finally, we give a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for min-max orientation on cacti if the number of st-pairs is a fixed constant. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.