Improved Lower Bound for Online Strip Packing

We study the online strip packing problem and derive an improved lower bound of ρ≥2.589… for the competitive ratio of this problem. The construction is based on modified “Brown-Baker-Katseff sequences” (Brown et al. in Acta Inform. 18:207–225, 1982) using only two types of rectangles. In addition, we present an online algorithm with competitive ratio \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$(3+\sqrt{5})/2 = 2.618\ldots$\end{document} for packing instances of this type.