An introduction to dynamic generative networks: Minimum cost flow

摘要

What we are dealing with is a class of networks called dynamic generative network flows in which the flow commodity is dynamically generated at source nodes and dynamically consumed at sink nodes. As a basic assumption, the source nodes produce the flow accord ing to time generative functions and the sink nodes absorb the flow according to time con sumption functions. This paper tries to introduce these networks and formulate minimum cost dynamic flow problem for a pre-specified time horizon T. Finally, some simple, effi cient approaches are developed to solve the dynamic problem, in the general form when the capacities and costs are time varying and some other special cases, as a minimum cost static flow problem.