On the complexity of Broadcast Domination and Multipacking in digraphs

We study the complexity of the two dual covering and packing distance-based problems Broadcast Domination and Multipacking in digraphs. A dominating broadcast of a digraph $D$ is a function $f:V(D)\to\mathbb{N}$ such that for each vertex $v$ of $D$, there exists a vertex $t$ with $f(t)>0$ having a directed path to $v$ of length at most $f(t)$. The cost of $f$ is the sum of $f(v)$ over all vertices $v$. A multipacking is a set $S$ of vertices of $D$ such that for each vertex $v$ of $D$ and for every integer $d$, there are at most $d$ vertices from $S$ within directed distance at most $d$ from $v$. The maximum size of a multipacking of $D$ is a lower bound to the minimum cost of a dominating broadcast of $D$. Let Broadcast Domination denote the problem of deciding whether a given digraph $D$ has a dominating broadcast of cost at most $k$, and Multipacking the problem of deciding whether $D$ has a multipacking of size at least $k$. It is known that Broadcast Domination is polynomial-time solvable for the class of all undirected graphs (that is, symmetric digraphs), while polynomial-time algorithms for Multipacking are known only for a few classes of undirected graphs. We prove that Broadcast Domination and Multipacking are both NP-complete for digraphs, even for planar layered acyclic digraphs of small maximum degree. Moreover, when parameterized by the solution cost/solution size, we show that the problems are W-hard. We also show that Broadcast Domination is FPT on acyclic digraphs, and that it does not admit a polynomial kernel for such inputs, unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to its third level. In addition, we show that both problems are FPT when parameterized by the solution cost/solution size together with the maximum out-degree, and as well, by the vertex cover number. Finally, we give for both problems polynomial-time algorithms for some subclasses of acyclic digraphs.

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