(Meta-)Heuristic Separation of Jump Cuts in a Branch&Cut Approach for the Bounded Diameter Minimum Spanning Tree Problem

Abstract

The bounded diameter minimum spanning tree problem is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem arising, for example, in network design when quality of service is of concern. We solve a strong integer linear programming formulation based on so-called jump inequalities by a Branch&Cut algorithm. As the separation subproblem of identifying currently violated jump inequalities is difficult, we approach it heuristically by two alternative construction heuristics, local search, and optionally tabu search. We also introduce a new type of cuts, the center connection cuts, to strengthen the formulation in the more difficult to solve odd diameter case. In addition, primal heuristics are used to compute initial solutions and to locally improve incumbent solutions identified during Branch&Cut. The overall algorithm performs excellently, and we were able to obtain proven optimal solutions for some test instances that were too large to be solved so far.