Fault Tolerant Approximate BFS Structures

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of designing a {\em fault-tolerant} $(\alpha, \beta)$ approximate BFS structure (or {\em FT-ABFS structure} for short), namely, a subgraph $H$ of the network $G$ such that subsequent to the failure of some subset $F$ of edges or vertices, the surviving part of $H$ still contains an \emph{approximate} BFS spanning tree for (the surviving part of) $G$, satisfying $dist(s,v,H\setminus F) \leq \alpha \cdot dist(s,v,G\setminus F)+\beta$ for every $v \in V$. We first consider {\em multiplicative} $(\alpha,0)$ FT-ABFS structures resilient to a failure of a single edge and present an algorithm that given an $n$-vertex unweighted undirected graph $G$ and a source $s$ constructs a $(3,0)$ FT-ABFS structure rooted at $s$ with at most $4n$ edges (improving by an $O(\log n)$ factor on the near-tight result of \cite{BS10} for the special case of edge failures). Assuming at most $f$ edge failures, for constant integer $f>1$, we prove that there exists a (poly-time constructible) $(3(f+1), (f+1) \log n)$ FT-ABFS structure with $O(f n)$ edges. We then consider {\em additive} $(1,\beta)$ FT-ABFS structures. In contrast to the linear size of $(\alpha,0)$ FT-ABFS structures, we show that for every $\beta \in [1, O(\log n)]$ there exists an $n$-vertex graph $G$ with a source $s$ for which any $(1,\beta)$ FT-ABFS structure rooted at $s$ has $\Omega(n^{1+\epsilon(\beta)})$ edges, for some function $\epsilon(\beta) \in (0,1)$. In particular, $(1,3)$ FT-ABFS structures admit a lower bound of $\Omega(n^{5/4})$ edges. Our lower bounds are complemented by an upper bound, showing that there exists a poly-time algorithm that for every $n$-vertex unweighted undirected graph $G$ and source $s$ constructs a $(1,4)$ FT-ABFS structure rooted at $s$ with at most $O(n^{4/3})$ edges.