Bicriterial Approximation for the Incremental Prize-Collecting Steiner-Tree Problem

We consider an incremental variant of the rooted prize-collecting Steiner-tree problem with a growing budget constraint. While no incremental solution exists that simultaneously approximates the optimum for all budgets, we show that a bicriterial $(α,μ)$-approximation is possible, i.e., a solution that with budget $B+α$ for all $B \in \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}$ is a multiplicative $μ$-approximation compared to the optimum solution with budget $B$. For the case that the underlying graph is a tree, we present a polynomial-time density-greedy algorithm that computes a $(χ,1)$-approximation, where $χ$ denotes the eccentricity of the root vertex in the underlying graph, and show that this is best possible. An adaptation of the density-greedy algorithm for general graphs is $(γ,2)$-competitive where $γ$ is the maximal length of a vertex-disjoint path starting in the root. While this algorithm does not run in polynomial time, it can be adapted to a $(γ,3)$-competitive algorithm that runs in polynomial time. We further devise a capacity-scaling algorithm that guarantees a $(3χ,8)$-approximation and, more generally, a $\smash{\bigl((4\ell - 1)χ, \frac{2^{\ell + 2}}{2^{\ell}-1}\bigr)}$-approximation for every fixed $\ell \in \mathbb{N}$.