Path Searching with Transit Nodes in Fast Changing Telecommunications Networks

Abstract

Transit nodes are a concept that has proven to speed up pathfinding in roadnetworks considerably. The main idea of transit nodes is to precompute paths for selected routes and use these as shortcuts during the search. While this method can be employed for road networks that remain static over a period of time, it can not be directly applied to complex fast changing networks such as those used for telecommunication since precomputed shortcuts can become invalid at any time. In this paper, an approach is presented that is based on transit nodes but extends the concept to accommodate for the special requirements of fast changing networks.