Interval Selection in Sliding Windows

We initiate the study of the Interval Selection problem in the (streaming) sliding window model of computation. In this problem, an algorithm receives a potentially infinite stream of intervals on the line, and the objective is to maintain at every moment an approximation to a largest possible subset of disjoint intervals among the L most recent intervals, for some integer L. We give the following results: 1) In the unit-length intervals case, we give a 2-approximation sliding window algorithm with space Õ(|OPT|), and we show that any sliding window algorithm that computes a (2-ε)-approximation requires space Ω(L), for any ε > 0. 2) In the arbitrary-length case, we give a (11/3+ε)-approximation sliding window algorithm with space Õ(|OPT|), for any constant ε > 0, which constitutes our main result. We also show that space Ω(L) is needed for algorithms that compute a (2.5-ε)-approximation, for any ε > 0. Our main technical contribution is an improvement over the smooth histogram technique, which consists of running independent copies of a traditional streaming algorithm with different start times. By employing the one-pass 2-approximation streaming algorithm by Cabello and Pérez-Lantero [Theor. Comput. Sci. '17] for Interval Selection on arbitrary-length intervals as the underlying algorithm, the smooth histogram technique immediately yields a (4+ε)-approximation in this setting. Our improvement is obtained by forwarding the structure of the intervals identified in a run to the subsequent run, which constrains the shape of an optimal solution and allows us to target optimal intervals differently.