An Exact Algorithm for Minimum Vertex Cover Problem

In this paper, we propose a branch-and-bound algorithm to solve exactly the minimum vertex cover (MVC) problem. Since a tight lower bound for MVC has a significant influence on the efficiency of a branch-and-bound algorithm, we define two novel lower bounds to help prune the search space. One is bas...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Luzhi Wang, Shuli Hu, Mingyang Li, Junping Zhou
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
Series:Mathematics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/7/7/603
Description
Summary:In this paper, we propose a branch-and-bound algorithm to solve exactly the minimum vertex cover (MVC) problem. Since a tight lower bound for MVC has a significant influence on the efficiency of a branch-and-bound algorithm, we define two novel lower bounds to help prune the search space. One is based on the degree of vertices, and the other is based on MaxSAT reasoning. The experiment confirms that our algorithm is faster than previous exact algorithms and can find better results than heuristic algorithms.
ISSN:2227-7390