Review of Algorithms to Solve Travelling Salesman Problem

Abstract

The Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a popular optimization problem in which shortest path of the salesperson travelling to all cities once and returning to the origin city is to be determined. This is done either by using exact algorithms or heuristic algorithms. The main concern with exact algorithms is that; exact algorithms can produce optimal solution but are always not practicable due to complexity of combinatorial optimization problem which are mostly NP- hard and the constraint of time. Therefore, TSP is solve using various heuristic algorithms which produce good enough but not necessarily optimal solution in reasonable time and drastically cuts down the solution space. This paper presents a review of different algorithms to solve TSP and find the shortest path through all the cities that the salesperson has to travel.