Decomposition of domains based on the micro-structure of finite constraint-satisfaction problems

  • Authors:

  • Philippe Jégou

  • Affiliations:

  • L.I.V.P., Université de Provence, Marseille cedex 3, France

  • Venue:
  • AAAI'93 Proceedings of the eleventh national conference on Artificial intelligence
  • Year:
  • 1993

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a method for improving search efficiency in the area of Constraint Satisfaction-Problems in finite domains. This method is based on the analysis of the "micro-structure" of a CSP. We call micro-structure of a CSP, the graph defined by the compatible relations between variablevalue pairs: vertices are these pairs, and edges are defined by pairs of compatible vertices. Given the micro-structure of a CSP, we can realize a preprocessing to simplify the problem with a decomposition of the domains of variables. So, we propose a new approach to problem decomposition in the field of CSPs, well adjusted in cases such as classical decomposition methods are without interest (i.e. when the constraint graph is complete). The method is described in the paper and a complexity analysis is presented, given theoretical justifications of the approach. Furthermore, two polynomial classes of CSPs are induced by this approach, the recognition of them being linear in the size of the instance of CSP considered.