Benders Decomposition, Branch-and-Cut, and Hybrid Algorithms for the Minimum Connected Dominating Set Problem

We present exact algorithms for solving the minimum connected dominating set problem in an undirected graph. The algorithms are based on two approaches: a Benders decomposition algorithm and a branch-and-cut method. We also develop a hybrid algorithm that combines these two approaches. Two variants of each of the three resulting algorithms are considered: a stand-alone version and an iterative probing variant. The latter variant is based on a simple property of the problem, which states that if no connected dominating set of a given cardinality exists, then there are no connected dominating sets of lower cardinality. We present computational results on a large set of instances from the literature.