This pa per considers the weighted in de pendent linkage problem which is a natural extension of the independent assignment problem recently treated by M. Iri and N. Tomizawa. Given a directed graph with two specified vertex subsets VI and V2 on which matroidal structures are defined respectivcl y, an independent linkage is a set of pair wise-a rc-disjoint paths from VI to V 2 such that the set of the initial vertices (resp. terminal vertices) of those paths is an independent set on Vl·(resp. V2)' The problem is to find an optimal independent linkage, i.e., a maximum independent linkage having the smallest total weight among all maximum independent linkages, 'where a weight is given to each arc. Wc present an algorithm for finding an optimal independent linkage.
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