Optimal Resource Augmentations for Online Knapsack

It is known that online knapsack is not competitive. This negative result remains true even if the items are removable. In this paper we consider online removable knapsack with resource augmentation, in which we hold a knapsack of capacity R ≥ 1.0 and aim at maintaining a feasible packing to maximize the total weight of the items packed. Accepted items can be removed to leave room for newly arriving items. Once an item is rejected/removed it can not be considered again. We evaluate an online algorithm by comparing the resulting packing to an optimal packing that uses a knapsack of capacity one. Optimal online algorithms are derived for both the weighted case (items have arbitrary weights) and the un-weighted case (the weight of an item is equal to its size).