An order-based algorithm for minimum dominating set with application in graph mining

Dominating set is a set of vertices of a graph such that all other vertices have a neighbour in the dominating set. We propose a new order-based randomised local search (RLSo) algorithm to solve minimum dominating set problem in large graphs. Experimental evaluation is presented for multiple types of problem instances. These instances include unit disk graphs, which represent a model of wireless networks, random scale-free networks, as well as samples from two social networks and real-world graphs studied in network science. Our experiments indicate that RLSo performs better than both a classical greedy approximation algorithm and two metaheuristic algorithms based on ant colony optimisation and local search. The order-based algorithm is able to find small dominating sets for graphs with tens of thousands of vertices. In addition, we propose a multi-start variant of RLSo that is suitable for solving the minimum weight dominating set problem. The application of RLSo in graph mining is also briefly demonstrated.