An approximation algorithm for a bottleneck traveling salesman problem

  • Authors:
  • Ming-Yang Kao;Manan Sanghi

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA;Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA 98052, USA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Discrete Algorithms
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Consider a truck running along a road. It picks up a load L"i at point @b"i and delivers it at @a"i, carrying at most one load at a time. The speed on the various parts of the road in one direction is given by f(x) and that in the other direction is given by g(x). Minimizing the total time spent to deliver loads L"1,...,L"n is equivalent to solving the traveling salesman problem (TSP) where the cities correspond to the loads L"i with coordinates (@a"i,@b"i) and the distance from L"i to L"j is given by @!"@a"""i^@b^"^jf(x)dx if @b"j=@a"i and by @!"@b"""j^@a^"^ig(x)dx if @b"j=f(x)g(x)=1@c@?x. Note that when f(x)=g(x), the approximation ratio is 3.