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<article-title>DisLRP<sub>&#945;</sub>: &#945;-approximation in Generalized Mutual
Assignment</article-title>
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<author><a href="mailto:hirayama@maritime.kobe-u.ac.jp"><name>Katsutoshi Hirayama</name></a></author>
<aff>Kobe University 5-1-1 Fukaeminami-machi, Higashinada-ku Kobe 658-0022, Japan</aff>


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<title>ABSTRACT</title>
<p>This paper presents a new distributed solution protocol,
called <italic>DisLRP</italic><sub>&#945;</sub>, for the <italic>Generalized Mutual Assignment
Problem</italic> (GMAP). The GMAP is a typical distributed combinatorial
optimization problem whose goal is to maximize
<italic>social welfare</italic> of the agents. Unlike the previous protocol
for the GMAP, DisLRP<sub>&#945;</sub> can provide a theoretical guarantee
on global solution quality. In DisLRP<sub>&#945;</sub>, as with in
the previous protocol, the agents repeatedly solve their local
problems while coordinating their local solutions using a
distributed constraint satisfaction technique. The key difference
is that, in DisLRP<sub>&#945;</sub>, each agent is required to produce
a feasible solution whose local objective value is not lower
than &#945; (0 &#60; &#945; &#8804; 1) times the local optimal value. Our
experimental results on benchmark problem instances show
that DisLRP<sub>&#945;</sub> can certainly find a solution whose global
objective value is higher than that theoretically guaranteed.
Furthermore, they also show that, while spending extra communication
and computation costs, DisLRP<sub>&#945;</sub> can produce a
significantly better solution than the previous protocol if we
set &#945; appropriately.</p>
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