Improved Algorithms For Bipartite Network Flow

In this paper, we study network flow algorithms for bipartite networks. A network G = (V; E) is called bipartite if its vertex set V can be partitioned into two subsets V 1 and V 2 such that all edges have one endpoint in V 1 and the other in V 2 . Let n = jV j, n 1 = jV 1 j, n 2 = jV 2 j, m = jEj and assume without loss of generality that n 1 n 2 . We call a bipartite network unbalanced if n 1 ø n 2 and balanced otherwise. (This notion is necessarily imprecise.) We show that several maximum flow algorithms can be substantially sped up when applied to unbalanced networks. The basic idea in these improvements is a two-edge push rule that allows us to "charge" most computation to vertices in V 1 , and hence develop algorithms whose running times depend on n 1 rather than n. For example, we show that the two-edge push version of Goldberg and Tarjan's FIFO preflow push algorithm runs in O(n 1 m + n 3 1 ) time and that the analogous version of Ahuja and Orlin's excess scaling algori..