English

Solving the Rural Postman problem using the Adleman-Lipton model

Computational Complexity 2010-12-16 v2

Abstract

In this survey we investigate the application of the Adleman-Lipton model on Rural Postman problem, which given an undirected graph G=(V,E)G=(V,E) with positive integer lengths on each of its edges and a subset EEE^{'}\subseteq E, asks whether there exists a hamiltonian circuit that includes each edge of EE^{'} and has total cost (sum of edge lengths) less or equal to a given integer B (we are allowed to use any edges of the set EEE-E^{'}, but we must use all edges of the set EE'). The Rural Postman problem (RPP) is a very interesting NP-complete problem used, especially, in network optimization. RPP is actually a special case of the Route Inspection problem, where we need to traverse all edges of an undirected graph at a minimum total cost. As all NP-complete problems, it currently admits no efficient solution and if actually PNPP\neq NP as it is widely accepted to be, it cannot admit a polynomial time algorithm to solve it. The application of the Adleman-Lipton model on this problem, provides an efficient way to solve RPP, as it is the fact for many other hard problems on which the Adleman-Lipton model has been applied. In this survey, we provide a polynomial algorithm based on the Lipton-Adleman model, which solves the RPP in O(n2)\mathcal{O}(n^{2}) time, where n refers to the input of the problem.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1012.2527,
  title  = {Solving the Rural Postman problem using the Adleman-Lipton model},
  author = {Nicolaos Matsakis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.2527},
  year   = {2010}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:57:13.747Z