The Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem: Algorithms, Instance Generators, and Tests

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary report on the rst broad-based experimental comparison of modern heuristics for the asymmetric traveling salesmen problem ATSP. There are currently three general classes of such heuristics: classical tour construction heuristics such as Nearest Neighbor and the Greedy algorithm, local search algorithms based on re-arranging segments of the tour, as exemplied by the Kanellakis-Papadimitriou algorithm KP80 , and algorithms based on patching together the cycles in a minimum cycle cover, the best of which are variants on an algorithm proposed by Zhang Zha93 . We test implementations of the main contenders from each class on a variety of instance types, introducing a variety of new random instance generators modeled on real-world applications of the ATSP. Among the many tentative conclusions we reach is that no single algorithm is dominant over all instance classes, although for each class the best tours are found either by Zhang's a...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: ALENEX
• Authors: Jill Cirasella, David S. Johnson, Lyle A. McGeoch, Weixiong Zhang
• Keywords: ALENEX 2001, ALENEX 2007, Algorithm, Salesmen Problem Atsp, Tour Construction Heuristics