A hybrid dynamic programming method for concave resource allocation problems

Abstract

Concave resource allocation problem is an integer programming problem of minimizing a nonincreasing concave function subject to a convex nondecreasing constraint and bounded integer variables. This class of problems are encountered in optimization models involving economies of scale. In this paper, a new hybrid dynamic programming method was proposed for solving concave resource allocation problems. A convex underestimating function was used to approximate the objective function and the resulting convex subproblem was solved with dynamic programming technique after transforming it into a 0–1 linear knapsack problem. To ensure the convergence, monotonicity and domain cut technique was employed to remove certain integer boxes and partition the revised domain into a union of integer boxes. Computational results were given to show the efficiency of the algorithm.