Simultaneous consecutive ones submatrix and editing problems: Classical complexity and fixed-parameter tractable results

Abstract

A binary matrix M has the consecutive ones property (C1P) for rows (resp. columns) if there exists a permutation of its columns (resp. rows) that arranges the ones consecutively in all the rows (resp. columns). If M has the C1P for rows and the C1P for columns, then M is said to have the simultaneous consecutive ones property (SC1P). In this article, we consider the classical complexity and fixed-parameter tractability of a few variants of decision problems related to the SC1P. Given a binary matrix M and a positive integer d, we focus on problems that decide whether there exists a set of rows, columns, and rows as well as columns, respectively, of size at most d in M, whose deletion results in a matrix with the SC1P. We also consider problems that decide whether there exists a set of 0-entries, 1-entries and 0-entries as well as 1-entries, respectively, of size at most d in M, whose flipping results in a matrix with the SC1P. In this paper, we show that all the above mentioned problems are NP-complete. We could also prove that all these problems are fixed-parameter tractable with respect to solution size as the parameter, except for two variants (flipping 1-entries and flipping 0/1-entries). We also give improved FPT algorithms for certain problems on restricted binary matrices.