Stochastic heuristics for knapsack problems

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce knapsack problem formulations, discuss their time complexity and propose their representation and solution based on the instance size. First, deterministic methods are briefly summarized. They can be applied to small-size tasks with a single constraint. However, because of NP-completeness of the problem, more complex problem instances must be solved by means of heuristic techniques to achieve an approximation of the exact solution in a reasonable amount of time. The problem representations and parameter settings for a genetic algorithm and simulated annealing frameworks are shown.