Solving the k-dominating set problem on very large-scale networks

Abstract

The well-known minimum dominating set problem (MDSP) aims to construct the minimum-size subset of vertices in a graph such that every other vertex has at least one neighbor in the subset. In this article, we study a general version of the problem that extends the neighborhood relationship: two vertices are called neighbors of each other if there exists a path through no more than k edges between them. The problem called “minimum k-dominating set problem” (MkDSP) becomes the classical dominating set problem if k is 1 and has important applications in monitoring large-scale social networks. We propose an efficient heuristic algorithm that can handle real-world instances with up to 17 million vertices and 33 million edges. This is the first time such large graphs are solved for the minimum k-dominating set problem.