Data structures and ejection chains for solving large-scale traveling salesman problems

Data structures play a crucial role in the efficient implementation of local search algorithms for problems that require circuit optimization in graphs. The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is the benchmark problem used in this study where two implementations of the stem-and-cycle (S&C) ejection chain algorithm are compared. The first implementation uses an Array data structure organized as a doubly linked list to represent TSP tours as well as the S&C reference structure. The second implementation considers a two-level tree structure. The motivation for this study comes from the fact that the S&C neighborhood structure usually requires subpaths to be reversed in order to preserve a feasible orientation for the resulting tour. The traditional Array structure proves to be inefficient for large-scale problems since to accomplish a path reversal it is necessary to update the predecessor and the successor of each node on the path to be reversed. Computational results performed on a set of benchmark problems up to 316,228 nodes clearly demonstrate the relative efficiency of the two-level tree data structure. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.