An effective implementation of the Lin-Kernighan traveling salesman heuristic

This report describes an implementation of the Lin-Kernighan heuristic, one of the most successful methods for generating optimal or nearoptimal solutions for the symmetric traveling salesman problem. Computational tests show that the implementation is highly effective. It has found optimal solutions for all solved problem instances we have been able to obtain, including a 7397-city problem (the largest nontrivial problem instance solved to optimality today). Furthermore, the algorithm has improved the best known solutions for a series of large-scale problems with unknown optima, among these an 85900-city problem.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: EOR
• Authors: Keld Helsgaun
• Keywords: EOR 2000, Largest Nontrivial Problem, Problem Instance, Traveling Salesman Problem