An asymptotic competitive scheme for online bin packing

Abstract

We study the online bin packing problem, in which a list of items with integral size between 1 to B arrives one at a time. Each item must be assigned in a bin of capacity B upon its arrival without any information on the next items, and the goal is to minimize the number of used bins. We present an asymptotic competitive scheme, i.e., for any ε > 0, the asymptotic competitive ratio is at most ρ∗ + _, where ρ∗ is the smallest possible asymptotic competitive ratio among all online algorithms.