Room allocation: a polynomial subcase of the quadratic assignment problem

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is among the hardest combinatorial optimization problems. Very few instances of this problem can be solved in polynomial time. In this paper we address the problem of allocating rooms among people in a suitable shape of corridor with some constraints of undesired neighborhood. We give a linear time algorithm for this problem that we formulate as a QAP. c © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.