On the <I>k</I>-splittable Flow Problem
Baier, Georg; Köhler, Ekkehard; Skutella, Martin
Preprint-Reihe des Instituts für Mathematik, Technische Universität Berlin
In traditional multi-commodity flow theory, the task is to send a certain amount of each commodity from its start to its target node, subject to capacity constraints on the edges. However, no restriction is imposed on the number of paths used for delivering each commodity; it is thus feasible to spread the flow over a large number of different paths. Motivated by routing problems arising in real-life applications, such as, e.g., telecommunication, unsplittable flows have moved into the focus of research. Here, the demand of each commodity may not be split but has to be sent along a single path.
