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International Symposium on Computing and Networking Workshops (CANDARW)

Multi-color ordering method for minimizing number of colors in quadratic unconstrained binary optimization formulation

Tomohiro Suzuki

Published Nov 25, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The multi-coloring method can be formulated as a graph coloring problem, which is known to be NP-hard. In this study, we solve the graph coloring problem using a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formulation. We perform parameter tuning and propose an iterative color reduction method to further decrease the number of colors. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the resulting parallel ordering as a preprocessing step for iterative methods, compared with conventional approaches.

DOI
10.1109/candarw68385.2025.00037

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The multi-coloring method can be formulated as a graph coloring problem, which is known to be NP-hard. In this study, we solve the graph coloring problem using a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formulation. We perform parameter tuning and propose an iterative color reduction method to further decrease the number of colors. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the resulting parallel ordering as a preprocessing step for iterative methods, compared with conventional approaches.
Optimum or quasi-optimum solutions of combinatorial optimization problems can be efficiently found by using Ising machines. The graph coloring problem (GCP) is known as a difficult combinatorial problem. Given a graph, each vertex should be assigned a color and any two vertices connected by an edge must not be colored the same. Although methods to map the GCP onto the Ising model are proposed, none of them considers minimizing the number of colors. In this paper, we propose a mapping method of the GCP including minimizing the number of colors and additional constraints to the QUBO (Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization) model. As well as the constraint terms for the GCP, we firstly propose an objective function term that can minimize the number of colors so that the number of used spins cannot increase exponentially. Secondly, we propose two more additional terms so that our proposed method can be applicable to practical consumer applications. The experimental evaluations on an Ising machine showed that the proposed method reduces the number of used colors by up to 75.1% on average compared with the existing baseline method. Considering the additional constraints, the proposed method can effectively find feasible solutions satisfying all the constraints.
Ising machines can find optimum or quasi-optimum solutions of combinatorial optimization problems efficiently and effectively. The graph coloring problem, which is one of the difficult combinatorial optimization problems, is to assign a color to each vertex of a graph such that no two vertices connected by an edge have the same color. Although methods to map the graph coloring problem onto the Ising model or quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) model are proposed, none of them considers minimizing the number of colors. In addition, there is no Ising-machine-based method considering additional constraints in order to apply to practical problems. In this paper, we propose a mapping method of the graph coloring problem including minimizing the number of colors and additional constraints to the QUBO model. As well as the constraint terms for the graph coloring problem, we firstly propose an objective function term that can minimize the number of colors so that the number of used spins cannot increase exponentially. Secondly, we propose two additional constraint terms: One is that specific vertices have to be colored with specified colors; The other is that specific colors cannot be used more than the number of times given in advance. We theoretically prove that, if the energy of the proposed QUBO mapping is minimized, all the constraints are satisfied and the objective function is minimized. The result of the experiment using an Ising machine showed that the proposed method reduces the number of used colors by up to 75.1% on average compared to the existing baseline method when additional constraints are not considered. Considering the additional constraints, the proposed method can effectively find feasible solutions satisfying all the constraints.
This dissertation investigates the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem, i.e. the problem of minimizing a quadratic function in binary variables. QUBO is studied at two complementary levels. First, there is an algorithmic aspect that tells how to preprocess the problem, how to find heuristics, how to get improved bounds and how to solve the problem with all the above ingredients.Second, there is a practical aspect that uses QUBO to solve various applications from the engineering and social sciences fields including: via minimization, 2D/3D Ising models, 1D Ising chain models, image binarization, hierarchical clustering, greedy graph coloring/partitioning, MAX-2-SAT, MIN-VC, MAX-CLIQUE, MAX-CUT, graph stability and minimum k-partition.Several families of fast heuristics for QUBO are analyzed, which include a novel probabilistic based class of methods.It is shown that there is a unique maximal set of persistencies for the linearization model for QUBO.This set is determined in polynomial time by a maximum flow followed by the computation of the strong components of a network that has 2n+2 nodes, where n is the number of variables. The identification of the above persistencies leads to a unique decomposition of the function, such that each component can be optimized separately. To find further persistencies, two additional techniques are proposed: one is based on the second order derivatives of Hammer et al. [HH81]; the other technique is a probing procedure on the two possible values of the variables.These preprocessing tools work remarkably well for certain classes of problems.We improved the Iterated Roof-Dual bound (IRD) of [BH89] by proposing two combinatorial methods: one was named the squeezed IRD; and the second was called the project-and-lift IRD method.The cubic-dual bound can be found by means of linear programming by adding a set of triangle inequalities to the standard linearization, whose number is cubic in the number of variables. We show that this set can be reduced depending on the coefficients of the terms of the function. This leads to the possibility of computing the cubic-duals of larger QUBOs.
We propose a technique to solve the problem of graph multi coloring, which is a problem corresponding to channel allocation problem, with the quantum approximate optimization algorithm(QAOA). QAOA is an algorithm that solve an optimization problem. Among the optimization problems, this algorithm is specialized as solving the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization(QUBO) problems. It is designed to find approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems by leveraging quantum resources. In general, it is evaluated to have strengths in optimizing the base of optimal path exploration, small factor resolution, and mass data exploration. The study on coloring problem using digital algorithm has solved the problem of coloring by replacing the graph with simple graph or applying algorithm or reducing the number of nodes. Despite these efforts, however, the digital algorithm that solves the coloring problem studied so far has not achieved satisfactory performance by some limitations. Therefore, in order to overcome these limitations, this paper will show the result of solving multi coloring problem by reducing initial state dimension of the QAOA
Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) is a combinatorial optimization problem defined by an energy function that consists of a quadratic formula involving multiple binary variables. We propose the method of combing bit reduction and duplication technique that can generate hard instances of QUBO problems from any original QUBO problem without changing the size. The idea is to reduce the original QUBO problem for a specified number of bits and duplicate the same number of bits while ensuring all duplicated pair of bits take the same binary values. Experimental results show that generated QUBO instances are much hard for solving.
The quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem arises in diverse optimization applications ranging from Ising spin problems to classical problems in graph theory and binary discrete optimization. The use of preprocessing to transform the graph representing the QUBO problem into a smaller equivalent graph is important for improving solution quality and time for both exact and metaheuristic algorithms and is a step towards mapping large scale QUBO to hardware graphs used in quantum annealing computers. In an earlier paper (Lewis and Glover, 2016) a set of rules was introduced that achieved significant QUBO reductions as verified through computational testing. Here this work is extended with additional rules that provide further reductions that succeed in exactly solving 10% of the benchmark QUBO problems. An algorithm and associated data structures to efficiently implement the entire set of rules is detailed and computational experiments are reported that demonstrate their efficacy.