Algorithms to solve the knapsack constrained maximum spanning tree problem

Abstract

The knapsack problem and the minimum spanning tree problem are both fundamental in operations research and computer science. We are concerned with a combination of these two problems. That is, we are given a knapsack of a fixed capacity, as well as an undirected graph where each edge is associated with profit and weight. The problem is to fill the knapsack with a feasible spanning tree such that the tree profit is maximized. We prove this problem 𝒩𝒫-hard, present upper and lower bounds, develop a branch-and-bound algorithm to solve the problem to optimality and propose a shooting method to accelerate computation. We evaluate the developed algorithm through a series of numerical experiments for various types of test problems.