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FWLS: A Local Search for Graph Coloring

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Frontiers in Algorithmics and Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7924))

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Abstract

Local search (LS) is a widely used, general approach for solving hard combinatorial search problems, such as the graph coloring problem (GCP). One main advantage of this method is that effective heuristics for a problem may lead to improvements in solving other problems. Recently, it has been shown that an initial LS algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) called WalkSAT is extremely effective for random SAT instances. Thus, it is interesting to apply the heuristics in WalkSAT to GCP. This paper proposes a random walk based heuristic, which is inspired by WalkSAT but differs in the tie-breaking mechanism. This new heuristic leads to a new LS algorithm for GCP namely FWLS. The experiments on the DIMACS benchmark show that FWLS finds optimal (or best known) solutions for most instances. Also, when compared to other GCP algorithms, including a greedy one, an LS one and a hybrid one, FWLS exhibits very competitive or better performance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies, Ministry of Education, Institute of Software, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Wei Wu & Chuan Luo

  2. College of Mathematics Physics and Information Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China

    Kaile Su

  3. Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Kaile Su

Authors
  1. Wei Wu
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  2. Chuan Luo
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  3. Kaile Su
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Information Technology, Charles Darwin University, 0909, Darwin, NT, Australia

    Michael Fellows

  2. School of High-Technology for Human Welfare, Tokai University, 317 Nishimo, 410-0395, Numazu, Japan

    Xuehou Tan

  3. Department of Computer Science, Montana State University, 59717, Bozeman, MT, USA

    Binhai Zhu

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Wu, W., Luo, C., Su, K. (2013). FWLS: A Local Search for Graph Coloring. In: Fellows, M., Tan, X., Zhu, B. (eds) Frontiers in Algorithmics and Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7924. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38756-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38756-2_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-38755-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-38756-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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