Online Line Aggregation with Deadlines: Randomized Guarantees and Learning-Augmented Tradeoffs

Abstract

We study online line aggregation with deadlines, where requests arrive over time on the positive half-line and a service at location $y$ clears all pending requests in $[0,y]$ at cost $y$. In the classical adversarial setting, we propose an $e$-competitive randomized algorithm against an oblivious adversary and prove a matching lower bound. Thus $e$ is the optimal randomized competitive ratio. We then consider advice in the form of an offline feasible solution. For every confidence parameter $λ\in(0,1]$, our deterministic learning-augmented algorithm is $(1+3/λ)$-robust and $(1+3λ)$-consistent. We also propose a randomized learning-augmented algorithm that is $(e+e/λ)$-robust and $(e-1+λ)$-consistent against an oblivious adversary. For the offline problem, we present a polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm. Numerical experiments complement the worst-case analysis: accurate advice lowers service costs, while both learning-augmented algorithms remain stable as the advice becomes increasingly noisy.