An exact bidirectional pulse algorithm for the constrained shortest path

Abstract

A constrained shortest path is a minimum‐cost sequence of arcs on a directed network that satisfies knapsack‐type constraints on the resource consumption over the arcs. We propose an exact method based on a recursive depth‐first search procedure known as the pulse algorithm (PA). One of the key contributions of the proposal lies in a bidirectional search strategy leveraged on parallelism. In addition, we developed a pulse‐based heuristic that quickly finds near‐optimal solutions and shows great potential for column generation (CG) schemes. We present computational experiments over large real‐road networks with up to 6 million nodes and 15 million arcs. We illustrate the use of the bidirectional PA in a CG scheme to solve a multi‐activity shift scheduling problem, where the pricing problem is modeled as a constrained‐shortest path with multiple resource constraints.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jun 21, 2020
Source ID
10.1002/net.21960

Entities

People

  • Andrés L. Medaglia
  • Daniel Duque
  • Leonardo Lozano
  • Nicolás Cabrera

Organizations

  • Northwestern University
  • Office of Naval Research Global
  • University of Cincinnati
  • University of the Andes

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Operations Research
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.