The graph association problem: Mathematical models and a lagrangian heuristic

Abstract

Graph association is the problem of merging many graphs that collectively describe a set of possibly repetitive entities and relationships into a single graph that contains unique entities and relationships. As a form of data association, graph association can be used to identify when two sensors are observing the same object so information from both sensors can be combined and analyzed in a meaningful and consistent way. Graph association between two graphs is related to the problem of graph matching, and between multiple graphs it is related to the common labeling of a graph set (also known as multiple graph matching) problem. This article contribution is to formulate graph association as a binary linear program and introduce a heuristic for solving multiple graph association using a Lagrangian relaxation approach to address issues with between‐graph transitivity requirements. The algorithms are tested on a representative dataset. The developed model formulation was found to accurately solve the graph association problem. Furthermore, the Lagrangian heuristic was found to solve the developed model within 3% of optimal on many problem instances, and found better solutions to large problems than is possible by directly using CPLEX. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Mar 06, 2013
Source ID
10.1002/nav.21532

Entities

People

  • Gregory Tauer
  • Moises Sudit
  • Rakesh Nagi

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Graph Algorithms and Convex Optimization.
  • Operations Research
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.