An Efficient Implementation of the Robust Tabu Search Heuristic for Sparse Quadratic Assignment Problems

0377-2217/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2010.09.009 ⇑ Tel.: +1 781 861 6279. E-mail address: [email protected] We propose and develop an efficient implementation of the robust tabu search heuristic for sparse quadratic assignment problems. The traditional implementation of the heuristic applicable to all quadratic assignment problems is of O(N) complexity per iteration for problems of size N. Using multiple priority queues to determine the next best move instead of scanning all possible moves, and using adjacency lists to minimize the operations needed to determine the cost of moves, we reduce the asymptotic (N?1) complexity per iteration to O(N log N). For practical sized problems, the complexity is O(N). 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.