A branch and bound algorithm for the matrix bandwidth minimization

In this article, we first review previous exact approaches as well as theoretical contributions for the problem of reducing the bandwidth of a matrix. This problem consists of finding a permutation of the rows and columns of a given matrix which keeps the non-zero elements in a band that is as close as possible to the main diagonal. This NP-complete problem can also be formulated as a labeling of vertices on a graph, where edges are the non-zero elements of the corresponding symmetrical matrix. We propose a new branch and bound algorithm and new expressions for known lower bounds for this problem. Empirical results with a collection of previously reported instances indicate that the proposed algorithm compares favourably to previous methods.