A heuristic to generate all best partially disjoint paths in a communications network

This paper considers a directed graph G(N, A) with n nodes, m directed arcs and a cost value for each arc. The synthesis of a partially link disjoint pair of paths for a given OD-pair with the minimum total cost is investigated. An algorithm is presented that solves the all-best partially disjoint path problem. The expected worst case running time of the algorithm is O(n/sup 3/). Possible applications include light path design and MPLS based traffic engineering. Partially disjoint path algorithms can also be used as intelligent alternatives to k-th shortest path algorithms.