The Near Exact Bin Covering Problem

Abstract

AbstractWe present a new generalization of the bin covering problem that is known to be a strongly NP-hard problem. In our generalization there is a positive constant $$\varDelta $$ Δ , and we are given a set of items each of which has a positive size. We would like to find a partition of the items into bins. We say that a bin is near exact covered if the total size of items packed into the bin is between 1 and $$1+\varDelta $$ 1 + Δ . Our goal is to maximize the number of near exact covered bins. If $$\varDelta =0$$ Δ = 0 or $$\varDelta >0$$ Δ > 0 is given as part of the input, our problem is shown here to have no approximation algorithm with a bounded asymptotic approximation ratio (assuming that $$P\ne NP$$ P ≠ N P ). However, for the case where $$\varDelta >0$$ Δ > 0 is seen as a constant, we present an asymptotic fully polynomial time approximation scheme (AFPTAS) that is our main contribution.