Network flow problems and congestion games : complexity and approximation results

(cont.) We first address the complexity of finding an optimal minimum cost solution to a congestion game. We consider both network and general congestion games, and we examine several variants of the problem concerning the structure of the game and its associated cost functions. Many of the problem variants are NP-hard, though we do identify several versions of the games that are solvable in polynomial time. We then investigate existence and the price of anarchy of pure Nash equilibria in k-splittable congestion games with linear costs. A k-splittable congestion game is one in which each player may split its flow on at most k different paths. We identify conditions for the existence of equilibria by providing a series of potential functions. For the price of anarchy, we show an asymptotic lower bound of 2.4 for unweighted k-splittable congestion games and 2.401 for weighted k-splittable congestion games, and an upper bound of 2.618 in both cases.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Meyers, Carol, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andreas S. Schulz.

• Operations Research Center.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35919

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35919