Tight bounds for NF-based bounded-space online bin packing algorithms

In Zheng et al. (J Comb Optim 30(2):360–369, 2015) modelled a surgery problem by the one-dimensional bin packing, and developed a semi-online algorithm to give an efficient feasible solution. In their algorithm they used a buffer to temporarily store items, having a possibility to lookahead in the list. Because of the considered practical problem they investigated the 2-parametric case, when the size of the items is at most 1 / 2. Using an NF-based online algorithm the authors proved an ACR of $$13/9 = 1.44\ldots $$ 13 / 9 = 1.44 … for any given buffer size not less than 1. They also gave a lower bound of $$4/3=1.33\ldots $$ 4 / 3 = 1.33 … for the bounded-space algorithms that use NF-based rules. Later, in Zhang et al. (J Comb Optim 33(2):530–542, 2017) an algorithm was given with an ACR of 1.4243, and the authors improved the lower bound to 1.4230. In this paper we present a tight lower bound of $$h_\infty (r)$$ h ∞ ( r ) for the r-parametric problem when the buffer capacity is 3. Since $$h_\infty (2) = 1.42312\ldots $$ h ∞ ( 2 ) = 1.42312 … , our result—as a special case—gives a tight bound for the algorithm-class given in 2017. To prove that the lower bound is tight, we present an NF-based online algorithm that considers the r-parametric problem, and uses a buffer with capacity of 3. We prove that this algorithm has an ACR that is equal to the lower bounds for arbitrary r.