Approximating the minimum directed tree cover

Given a directed graph G with non negative cost on the arcs, a directed tree cover of G is a directed tree such that either head or tail (or both of them) of every arc in G is touched by T . The minimum directed tree cover problem (DTCP) is to find a directed tree cover of minimum cost. The problem is known to be NP -hard. In this paper, we show that the weighted Set Cover Problem (SCP) is a special case of DTCP. Hence, one can expect at best to approximate DTCP with the same factor as for SCP. We show that this expectation can be satisfied in some way by designing a purely combinatorial approximation algorithm for the DTCP and proving that the approximation factor of the algorithm is max(2, ln(D)) with D is the maximum outgoing degree of the nodes in G.