An Improved Scheduling Algorithm for Traveling Tournament Problem with Maximum Trip Length Two

TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved scheduling algorithm for the Traveling Tournament Problem with a maximum of two consecutive home or away matches, achieving better results for up to 32 teams.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel scheduling algorithm specifically designed for TTP with maximum trip length two, outperforming existing methods for up to 32 teams.

Findings

Achieves lower total travel distance than previous algorithms.

Effective for tournaments with up to 32 teams.

Handles constraints of maximum two consecutive home or away matches.

Abstract

The Traveling Tournament Problem(TTP) is a combinatorial optimization problem where we have to give a scheduling algorithm which minimizes the total distance traveled by all the participating teams of a double round-robin tournament maintaining given constraints. Most of the instances of this problem with more than ten teams are still unsolved. By definition of the problem the number of teams participating has to be even. There are different variants of this problem depending on the constraints. In this problem, we consider the case where number of teams is a multiple of four and a team can not play more than two consecutive home or away matches. Our scheduling algorithm gives better result than the existing best result for number of teams less or equal to 32.