Abstract
Winner(s) determination in online reverse auctions is a very appealing e-commerce application. This is a combinatorial optimization problem where the goal is to find an optimal solution meeting a set of requirements and minimizing a given procurement cost. This problem is hard to tackle especially when multiple attributes of instances of items are considered together with additional constraints, such as seller’s stocks and discount rate. The challenge here is to determine the optimal solution in a reasonable computation time. Solving this problem with a systematic method will guarantee the optimality of the returned solution but comes with an exponential time cost. On the other hand, approximation techniques such as evolutionary algorithms are faster but trade the quality of the solution returned for the running time. In this paper, we conduct a comparative study of several exact and evolutionary techniques that have been proposed to solve various instances of the combinatorial reverse auction problem. In particular, we show that a recent method based on genetic algorithms outperforms some other methods in terms of time efficiency while returning a near to optimal solution in most of the cases.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abbasian, R., Mouhoub, M.: An efficient hierarchical parallel genetic algorithm for graph coloring problem. In: 13th Annual GECCO, pp. 521–528 (2011)
Abbasian, R., Mouhoub, M.: A hierarchical parallel genetic approach for the graph coloring problem. Appl. Intell. 39(3), 510–528 (2013). Springer
Avasarala, V., Mullen, T., Hall, D.L., Garga, A.: MASM: market architecture or sensor management in distributed sensor networks. In: SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, pp. 5813–5830 (2005)
Avasarala, V., Polavarapu, H., Mullen, T.: An approximate algorithm for resource allocation using combinatorial auctions. In: International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, pp. 571–578 (2006)
Das, A., Grosu, D.: A combinatorial auction-based protocols for resource allocation in grids. In: 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (2005)
Ebrahim, R.M., Razmi, J., Haleh, H.: Scatter search algorithm for supplier selection and order lot sizing under multiple price discount environment. Adv. Eng. Softw. 40(9), 766–776 (2009)
Gonen, R., Lehmann, D.: Optimal solutions for multi-unit combinatorial auctions: branch and bound heuristics. In: 2nd ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 13–20 (2000)
Gong, J., Qi, J., Xiong, G., Chen, H., Huang, W.: A GA based combinatorial auction algorithm for multi-robot cooperative hunting. In: International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Security, pp. 137–141 (2007)
Gupta, D., Ghafir, S.: An overview of methods maintaining diversity in genetic algorithms. Int. J. Emerg. Technol. Adv. Eng. 2(5), 56–60 (2012)
Muhlenbein, H.: Evolution in time and space-the parallel genetic algorithm. In: Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, pp. 316–337 (1991)
Narahari, Y., Dayama, P.: Combinatorial auctions for electronic business. Sadhana 30(Pt. 2 & 3), 179–211 (2005)
Nowostawski, M., Poli, R.: Parallel genetic algorithm taxonomy. In: 3rd International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information Engineering Systems, pp. 88–92 (1999)
Ostler, J., Wilke, P.: Improvement by combination how to increase the performance of optimisation algorithms by combining them. In: 10th International Conference of the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling, pp. 359–365 (2014)
Patodi, P., Ray, A.K., Jenamani, M.: GA based winner determination in combinatorial reverse auction. In: 2nd International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT), pp. 361–364 (2011)
Qian, X., Huang, M., Gao, T., Wang, X.: An improved ant colony algorithm for winner determination in multi-attribute combinatorial reverse auction. In: IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), pp. 1917–1921 (2014)
Rassenti, S.J., Smith, V.L., Bulfin, R.L.: A combinatorial auction mechanism for airport time slot allocation. Bell J. Econ. 13, 402–417 (1982)
Shil, S.K., Mouhoub, M.: Considering multiple instances of items in combinatorial reverse auctions. In: Ali, M., Pan, J.-S., Chen, S.-M., Horng, M.-F. (eds.) IEA/AIE 2014, Part II. LNCS, vol. 8482, pp. 487–496. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)
Shil, S.K., Mouhoub, M., Sadaoui, S.: An approach to solve winner determination in combinatorial reverse auctions using genetic algorithms. In: 15th Annual GECCO, pp. 75–76 (2013)
Shil, S.K., Mouhoub, M., Sadaoui, S.: Evolutionary technique for combinatorial reverse auctions. In: 28th FLAIRS, pp. 79–84 (2015)
Shil, S.K., Mouhoub, M., Sadaoui, S.: Winner determination in combinatorial reverse auctions. In: Ali, M., Bosse, T., Hindriks, K.V., Hoogendoorn, M., Jonker, C.M., Treur, J. (eds.) Contemporary Challenges and Solutions in Applied AI. SCI, vol. 489, pp. 35–40. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Sadaoui, S., Shil, S.K.: Constraint and qualitative preference specification in multi-attribute reverse auctions. In: Ali, M., Pan, J.-S., Chen, S.-M., Horng, M.-F. (eds.) IEA/AIE 2014, Part II, LNCS(LNAI), vol. 8482, pp. 497–506. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)
Xia, W., Wu, Z.: Supplier selection with multiple criteria in volume discount environments. Omega 35(5), 494–504 (2007)
Zhang, L.: The winner determination approach of combinatorial auctions based on double layer orthogonal multi-agent genetic algorithm. In: 2nd IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, pp. 2382–2386 (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Shil, S.K., Mouhoub, M., Sadaoui, S. (2015). Winner Determination in Multi-attribute Combinatorial Reverse Auctions. In: Arik, S., Huang, T., Lai, W., Liu, Q. (eds) Neural Information Processing. ICONIP 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9491. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26555-1_73
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26555-1_73
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26554-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26555-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)