Constraint satisfaction problems: Convexity makes AllDifferent constraints tractable

Michael Fellows, Tobias Friedrich, Danny Hermelin, Nina Narodytska, Frances Rosamond

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

We examine the complexity of constraint satisfaction problems that consist of a set of AllDiff constraints. Such CSPs naturally model a wide range of real-world and combinatorial problems, like scheduling, frequency allocations, and graph coloring problems. As this problem is known to be NP-complete, we investigate under which further assumptions it becomes tractable. We observe that a crucial property seems to be the convexity of the variable domains and constraints. Our main contribution is an extensive study of the complexity of Multiple AllDiff CSPs for a set of natural parameters, like maximum domain size and maximum size of the constraint scopes. We show that, depending on the parameter, convexity can make the problem tractable even though it is provably intractable in general. Interestingly, the convexity of constraints is the key property in achieving fixed parameter tractability, while the convexity of domains does not usually make the problem easier.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)81-89
Number of pages9
JournalTheoretical Computer Science
Volume472
DOIs
StatePublished - 11 Feb 2013
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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