Converting MST to TSP Path by Branch Elimination

Abstract

Travelling salesman problem (TSP) has been widely studied for the classical closed loop variant but less attention has been paid to the open loop variant. Open loop solution has property of being also a spanning tree, although not necessarily the minimum spanning tree (MST). In this paper, we present a simple branch elimination algorithm that removes the branches from MST by cutting one link and then reconnecting the resulting subtrees via selected leaf nodes. The number of iterations equals to the number of branches (b) in the MST. Typically, b << n where n is the number of nodes. With O-Mopsi and Dots datasets, the algorithm reaches gap of 1.69% and 0.61 %, respectively. The algorithm is suitable especially for educational purposes by showing the connection between MST and TSP, but it can also serve as a quick approximation for more complex metaheuristics whose efficiency relies on quality of the initial solution.