K Shortest Path Implementation

Abstract: The problem of computing K shortest loopless paths, or ranking of the K shortest loopless paths between a pair of given vertices in a network is a well-studied generalization of shortest path problem. The K shortest paths problem determines not only one shortest path but the K best shortest paths from s to t in an increasing order of weight of the paths. Yen’s algorithm is known to be the efficient and widely used algorithm for determining K shortest loopless paths. Here, we introduce a new algorithm by modifying the Yen’s algorithm in the following way: instead of removing the vertices and the edges from the graph, we store them in two different sets. Then we modified the Dijkstra’s algorithm by taking these two sets into consideration. Thus the algorithm applies glass box methodology by using the modified Dijkstra’s algorithm for our dedicated purpose. Thus the efficiency is improved. The computational results conducted over different datasets, shows the proposed algorithm has better performance results.