Integral flow decomposition with minimum longest path length

Kołtyś, K; Pieńkosz, K

  • European Journal of Operational Research;
  • Tom: 247;
  • Numer: 2;
  • Strony: 414-420;
  • 2015;

This paper concerns the problem of decomposing a network flow into an integral path flow such that the length of the longest path is minimized.It is shown that this problem isNP-hard in the strong sense.Two approximation algorithms are proposed for the problem:the longest path elimination(LPE)algorithm and the balanced flow propagation(BFP)algorithm.We analyze the properties of both algorithms and present the results of experimental studies examining their performance and efficiency.

Keywords: Networks, Flow decomposition, Integral flow, NP-hardproblem, Approximation algorithms