A primal-dual method for approximating tree cover with two weights

The tree cover (TC) problem is to compute a minimum weight connected edge set, given a connected and edge-weighted graph G, such that its vertex set forms a vertex cover for G. Unlike related problems of vertex cover or edge dominating set, weighted TC is not yet known to be approximable in polynomial time as well as the unweighted version is. Moreover, the best approximation algorithm known so far for weighted TC is far from practical in its efficiency. In this paper we consider a restricted version of weighted TC, as a first step towards better approximation of general TC, where only two edge weights differing by at least a factor of 2 are available. It will be shown that a factor 2 approximation can be attained efficiently (in the complexity of max flow) in this case by a primal-dual method. Even under the limited weights as such, the primal-dual arguments used will be seen to be quite involved, having a nontrivial style of dual assignments as an essential part, unlike the case of uniform weights. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.