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Online Metric TSP

Authors: Christian Bertram

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 351, 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)


Abstract
In the online metric traveling salesperson problem, n points of a metric space arrive one by one and have to be placed (immediately and irrevocably) into empty cells of a size-n array. The goal is to minimize the sum of distances between consecutive points in the array. This problem was introduced by Abrahamsen, Bercea, Beretta, Klausen, and Kozma [ESA'24] as a generalization of the online sorting problem, which was introduced by Aamand, Abrahamsen, Beretta, and Kleist [SODA'23] as a tool in their study of online geometric packing problems. Online metric TSP has been studied for a range of fixed metric spaces. For 1-dimensional Euclidean space, the problem is equivalent to online sorting, where an optimal competitive ratio of Θ(√n) is known. For d-dimensional Euclidean space, the best-known upper bound is O(2^d √{dn log n}), leaving a gap to the Ω(√n) lower bound. Finally, for the uniform metric, where all distances are 0 or 1, the optimal competitive ratio is known to be Θ(log n). We study the problem for a general metric space, presenting an algorithm with competitive ratio O(√n). In particular, we close the gap for d-dimensional Euclidean space, completely removing the dependence on dimension. One might hope to simultaneously guarantee competitive ratio O(√n) in general and O(log n) for the uniform metric, but we show that this is impossible.

Cite as

Christian Bertram. Online Metric TSP. In 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 351, pp. 80:1-80:9, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{bertram:LIPIcs.ESA.2025.80,
  author =	{Bertram, Christian},
  title =	{{Online Metric TSP}},
  booktitle =	{33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)},
  pages =	{80:1--80:9},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-395-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{351},
  editor =	{Benoit, Anne and Kaplan, Haim and Wild, Sebastian and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.80},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-245485},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.80},
  annote =	{Keywords: online algorithm, metric space, TSP}
}
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