About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Paper
Time-varying shortest path problems with constraints
Abstract
We study a new version of the shortest path problem. Let G = (V, E) be a directed graph. Each arc e ∈ E has two numbers attached to it: a transit time b(e, u) and a cost c(e, u), which are functions of the departure time u at the beginning vertex of the arc. Moreover, postponement of departure (i.e., waiting) at a vertex may be allowed. The problem is to find the shortest path, i.e., the path with the least possible cost, subject to the constraint that the total traverse time is at most some number T. Three variants of the problem are examined. In the first one, we assume arbitrary waiting times, where waiting at a vertex without any restriction is allowed. In the second variant, we assume zero waiting times, namely, waiting at any vertex is strictly prohibited. Finally, we consider the general case where there is a vertex-dependent upper bound on the waiting time at each vertex. Several algorithms with pseudopolynomial time complexity are proposed to optimally solve the problems. First, we assume that all transit times b(e, u) are positive integers. In the last section, we show how to include zero transit times. © 1997 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.