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Data Reduction for Maximum Matching on Real-World Graphs: Theory and Experiments

Published: 23 April 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Finding a maximum-cardinality or maximum-weight matching in (edge-weighted) undirected graphs is among the most prominent problems of algorithmic graph theory. For n-vertex and m-edge graphs, the best-known algorithms run in Õ(mn) time. We build on recent theoretical work focusing on linear-time data reduction rules for finding maximum-cardinality matchings and complement the theoretical results by presenting and analyzing (thereby employing the kernelization methodology of parameterized complexity analysis) new (near-)linear-time data reduction rules for both the unweighted and the positive-integer-weighted case. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrate that these data reduction rules provide significant speedups of the state-of-the art implementations for computing matchings in real-world graphs: the average speedup factor is 4.7 in the unweighted case and 12.72 in the weighted case.

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cover image ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics
ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics  Volume 26, Issue
December 2021
479 pages
ISSN:1084-6654
EISSN:1084-6654
DOI:10.1145/3446425
Issue’s Table of Contents
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 April 2021
Accepted: 01 November 2020
Revised: 01 September 2020
Received: 01 November 2019
Published in JEA Volume 26

Author Tags

  1. Algorithm engineering
  2. FPT in P
  3. crown structures
  4. kernelization
  5. preprocessing
  6. vertex cover

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