A generalized matrix based algorithm for routing in acyclic unidirectional networks

Abstract

This paper presents a generalized matrix-based algorithm for generating routing schemes in an acyclic unidirectional network. The fundamental approach is to generate all possible paths from a source location to destination represented in a 2-dimensional matrix applying the proposed blanking patterns (BP) algorithm. It was found that, blanking patterns algorithm effectively provides the list of all routes in any unidirectional acyclic network by identifying definite patterns of combinations of rows and columns. With this approach, students, professionals, scientists and engineers easily implement programs for finding shortest, longest paths or to implement programs related critical path finding in project networks without understanding complex data structures or algorithms.