A Gradient-Based Interior-Point Method to Solve the Many-to-Many Assignment Problems

Abstract

The many-to-many assignment problem (MMAP) is a recent topic of study in the field of combinatorial optimization. In this paper, a gradient-based interior-point method is proposed to solve MMAP. It is a deterministic method which assures an optimal solution. In this approach, the relaxation of the constraints is performed initially using the cardinality constraint detection operation. Then, the logarithmic barrier function (LBF) based gradient descent approach is executed to reach an accurate solution. Experiments have been performed to validate the practical implementation of the proposed algorithm. It also illustrates a significant improvement in convergence speed for the large MMAPs (i.e., if group size, α≥80) over state-of-the-art literature.