The Steiner Traveling Salesman Problem With Online Edge Blockages

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-16-2015

Publication Title

European Journal of Operational Research

DOI

10.1016/j.ejor.2014.11.013

ISSN

0377-2217

Abstract

We consider the online Steiner Traveling Salesman Problem. In this problem, we are given an edge-weighted graph G = (V, E) and a subset D⊆V of destination vertices, with the optimization goal to find a minimum weight closed tour that traverses every destination vertex of D at least once. During the traversal, the salesman could encounter at most k non-recoverable blocked edges. The edge blockages are real-time, meaning that the salesman knows about a blocked edge whenever it occurs. We first show a lower bound on the competitive ratio and present an online optimal algorithm for the problem. While this optimal algorithm has non-polynomial running time, we present another online polynomial-time near optimal algorithm for the problem. Experimental results show that our online polynomial-time algorithm produces solutions very close to the offline optimal solutions.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS