An Analysis of the Extended Christofides Heuristic for the k-depot Travelling Salesman Problem

• Main Authors: XU, Zhou, XU, Liang, RODRIGUES, Brian Charles
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2011
• Subjects: Approximation algorithms; Christofides heuristic; Multiple depots; TSP; Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/4920
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We study an extension of the classical traveling salesman problem (TSP) to a situation with k≥2 depots at each of which a distinct salesman is based. We show that a non-trivial extension of the well-known Christofides heuristic has a tight approximation ratio of 2−1/k, which improves on the known 2-...