The linear assignment problem

Abstract

We present a broad survey of recent polynomial algorithms for the linear assignment problem. They all use essentially alternating trees and/or strongly feasible trees. Most of them employ Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm directly or indirectly. When properly implemented, each has the same complexity: O (n 3) for dense graphs with simple data structures and O (n 2 log n+nm) for sparse graphs using Fibonacci Heaps.