A simple and deterministic competitive algorithm for online facility location

This paper presents a deterministic and efficient algorithm for online facility location. The algorithm is based on a simple hierarchical partitioning and is extremely simple to implement. It also applies to a variety of models, i. e. , models where the facilities can be placed anywhere in the region, or only at customer sites, or only at fixed locations. The paper shows that the algorithm is O(log n)-competitive under these various models, where n is the total number of customers. It also shows that the algorithm is O(1)-competitive with high probability and for any arrival order when customers are uniformly distributed or when they follow a distribution satisfying a smoothness property. Experimental results for a variety of scenarios indicate that the algorithm behaves extremely well in practice.

Authors

• Aris Anagnostopoulos
• Russell Bent
• Eli Upfal
• Pascal Van Hentenryck

Keywords

• Online facility location
• Stochastic analysis
• Competitive ratio