Escaping a grid by edge-disjoint paths

We study the edge-disjoint escape problem in grids: Given a set of n sources in a two-dimensional grid, the problem is to connect all sources to the grid boundary using a set of n edge-disjoint paths. Different from the conventional approach that reduces the problem to network flow problem, we solve the problem by ensuring that no rectangles in the grid contain more sources than outlets, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a solution. Based on this condition, we give a greedy algorithm which finds the paths in O(n2) time, which is faster than the previous approaches. This problem has applications in point-to-point delivery, VLSI reconfiguration and package routing.published_or_final_versio

The edge-disjoint path problem on random graphs by message-passing

We present a message-passing algorithm to solve the edge disjoint path problem (EDP) on graphs incorporating under a unique framework both traffic optimization and path length minimization. The min-sum equations for this problem present an exponential computational cost in the number of paths. To overcome this obstacle we propose an efficient implementation by mapping the equations onto a weighted combinatorial matching problem over an auxiliary graph. We perform extensive numerical simulations on random graphs of various types to test the performance both in terms of path length minimization and maximization of the number of accommodated paths. In addition, we test the performance on benchmark instances on various graphs by comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms and results found in the literature. Our message-passing algorithm always outperforms the others in terms of the number of accommodated paths when considering non trivial instances (otherwise it gives the same trivial results). Remarkably, the largest improvement in performance with respect to the other methods employed is found in the case of benchmarks with meshes, where the validity hypothesis behind message-passing is expected to worsen. In these cases, even though the exact message-passing equations do not converge, by introducing a reinforcement parameter to force convergence towards a sub optimal solution, we were able to always outperform the other algorithms with a peak of 27% performance improvement in terms of accommodated paths. On random graphs, we numerically observe two separated regimes: one in which all paths can be accommodated and one in which this is not possible. We also investigate the behaviour of both the number of paths to be accommodated and their minimum total length.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Escaping a grid by edge-disjoint paths

We study the edge-disjoint escape problem in grids. Given a set of n sources in a two-dimensional grid, the problem is to connect all sources to the grid boundary using a set of n edge-disjoint paths. Different from the conventional approach, which reduces the problem to a network flow problem, we solve the problem by first ensuring that no rectangle in the grid contain more sources than outlets, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a solution. Based on this condition, we give a greedy algorithm that finds the paths in 0(n2) time, which is faster than all previous approaches. This problem finds applications in point-to-point delivery, VLSI reconfiguration, and package routing.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Escaping a grid by edge-disjoint paths

We study the edge-disjoint escape problem in grids. Given a set of n sources in a two-dimensional grid, the problem is to connect all sources to the grid boundary using a set of n edge-disjoint paths. Different from the conventional approach, which reduces the problem to a network flow problem, we solve the problem by first ensuring that no rectangle in the grid contain more sources than outlets, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a solution. Based on this condition, we give a greedy algorithm that finds the paths in O(n 2) time, which is faster than all previous approaches. This problem finds applications in point-to-point delivery, VLSI reconfiguration, and package routing.