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European Symposium on Algorithms

ESA 2011: Algorithms – ESA 2011 pp 433–444Cite as

An Experimental Study on Approximating K Shortest Simple Paths

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 6942))

Abstract

We have conducted an extensive experimental study on approximation algorithms for computing k shortest simple paths in weighted directed graphs. Very recently, Bernstein [2] presented an algorithm that computes a 1 + ε approximated k shortest simple paths in O(ε − 1 k(m + nlogn)log2 n) time. We have implemented Bernstein’s algorithm and tested it on synthetic inputs and real world graphs (road maps). Our results reveal that Bernstein’s algorithm has a practical value in many scenarios. Moreover, it produces in most of the cases exact paths rather than approximated. We also present a new variant for Bernstein’s algorithm. We prove that our new variant has the same upper bounds for the running time and approximation as Bernstein’s original algorithm. We have implemented and tested this variant as well. Our testing show that this variant, which is based on a simple theoretical observation, is better than Bernstein’s algorithm in practice.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

    Asaf Frieder & Liam Roditty

Authors
  1. Asaf Frieder
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  2. Liam Roditty
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, University of Rome " La Sapienza", via Ariosto 25, 00185, Roma, Italy

    Camil Demetrescu

  2. School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Menntavegur 1, 101, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Magnús M. Halldórsson

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Frieder, A., Roditty, L. (2011). An Experimental Study on Approximating K Shortest Simple Paths. In: Demetrescu, C., Halldórsson, M.M. (eds) Algorithms – ESA 2011. ESA 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6942. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23719-5_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23719-5_37

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23718-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23719-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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