A Simple Optimal Contention Resolution Scheme for Uniform Matroids

Abstract: Contention resolution schemes (or CR schemes), introduced by Chekuri, Vondrak and Zenklusen, are a class of randomized rounding algorithms for converting a fractional solution to a relaxation for a down-closed constraint family into an integer solution. A CR scheme takes a fractional point $x$ in a relaxation polytope, rounds each coordinate $x_i$ independently to get a possibly non-feasible set, and then drops some elements in order to satisfy the constraints. Intuitively, a contention resolution scheme is $c$-balanced if every element $i$ is selected with probability at least $c \cdot x_i$. It is known that general matroids admit a $(1-1/e)$-balanced CR scheme, and that this is (asymptotically) optimal. This is in particular true for the special case of uniform matroids of rank one. In this work, we provide a simple and explicit monotone CR scheme for uniform matroids of rank $k$ on $n$ elements with a balancedness of $1 - \binom{n}{k}:\left(1-\frac{k}{n}\right)^{n+1-k}:\left(\frac{k}{n}\right)^k$, and show that this is optimal. As $n$ grows, this expression converges from above to $1 - e^{-k}k^k/k!$. While this asymptotic bound can be obtained by combining previously known results, these require defining an exponential-sized linear program, as well as using random sampling and the ellipsoid algorithm. Our procedure, on the other hand, has the advantage of being simple and explicit. This scheme extends naturally into an optimal CR scheme for partition matroids.