A simple version of Karzanov's blocking flow algorithm

  • Authors:
  • Robert Endre Tarjan

  • Affiliations:
  • AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA

  • Venue:
  • Operations Research Letters
  • Year:
  • 1984

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Abstract

Dinic has shown that the classic maximum flow problem on a graph of n vertices and m edges can be reduced to a sequence of at most n - 1 so-called 'blocking flow' problems on acyclic graphs. For dense graphs, the best time bound known for the blocking flow problems is O(n^2). Karzanov devised the first O(n^2)-time blocking flow algorithm, which unfortunately is rather complicated. Later Malhotra, Kumar and Maheshwari devise another O(n^2)-time algorithm, which is conceptually very simple but has some other drawbacks. In this paper we propose a simplification of Karzanov's algorithm that is easier to implement than Malhotra, Kumar and Maheshwari's method.