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Approximation Algorithms for the Traveling Purchaser Problem and Its Variants in Network Design

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Algorithms - ESA’ 99 (ESA 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1643))

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Abstract

The traveling purchaser problem is a generalization of the traveling salesman problem with applications in a wide range of areas including network design and scheduling. The input consists of a set of markets and a set of products. Each market offers a price for each product and there is a cost associated with traveling from one market to another. The problem is to purchase all products by visiting a subset of the markets in a tour such that the total travel and purchase costs are minimized. This problem includes many well-known NP-hard problems such as uncapacitated facility location, set cover and group Steiner tree problems as its special cases.

We give an approximation algorithm with a poly-logarithmic worst-case ratio for the traveling purchaser problem with metric travel costs. For a special case of the problem that models the ring-star network design problem, we give a constantfactor approximation algorithm. Our algorithms are based on rounding LP relaxation solutions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. GSIA, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    R. Ravi

Authors
  1. R. Ravi
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  2. F. S. Salman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics and DIMATIA Centre, Charles University, Malostranská nám. 25, CZ-11800, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Nešetřil

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ravi, R., Salman, F.S. (1999). Approximation Algorithms for the Traveling Purchaser Problem and Its Variants in Network Design. In: Nešetřil, J. (eds) Algorithms - ESA’ 99. ESA 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1643. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48481-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48481-7_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66251-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48481-3

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