Shortest Path Finder with Light Materialized Path View for Location Based Services

Abstract

Fast shortest path search between two points on a road network is essential demand in location based services (LBS). For this purpose, several types of road network distance materialization methods have been studied. The distance materialization approach is quite fast, however, it results in a huge amount of data. This paper proposes a shortest path search algorithm based on materialized-path-view constructed only on partitioned subgraphs, and its three variations referring different levels of distance materialization. The amount of pre-computed data is greatly reduced. The shortest path is retrieved by a best-first-search using a priority queue. The difference between three variations of the algorithm is the materialization level of the distance in the subgraphs. The performance of them is evaluated comparing with A* algorithm and HEPV experimentally. Through the results, we show the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional methods.