On space constrained set selection problems

Space constrained optimization problems arise in a variety of applications, ranging from databases to ubiquitous computing. Typically, these problems involve selecting a set of items of interest, subject to a space constraint. We show that in many important applications, one faces variants of this basic problem, in which the individual items are sets themselves, and each set is associated with a benefit value. Since there are no known approximation algorithms for these problems, we explore the use of greedy and randomized techniques. We present a detailed performance and theoretical evaluation of the algorithms, highlighting the efficiency of the proposed solutions.