Proving Optimality for the Bandwidth Multicoloring Problem via SAT

Abstract

The Bandwidth Multicoloring Problem (BMCP) is an NP-hard extension of the Bandwidth Coloring Problem (BCP) with important applications in telecommunications, resource allocation, and scheduling. While state-of-the-art metaheuristics can efficiently produce high-quality solutions, they cannot certify global optimality. Existing exact approaches based on Constraint Programming (CP) and Integer Programming (IP) provide such guarantees but typically require extensive computation and still lag behind metaheuristics in solution quality, leaving many benchmark instances without optimality certificates. In this paper, we present the first SAT-based exact framework for the BMCP. Our main contribution is an efficient SAT encoding that compactly models both intra-vertex and inter-vertex color distance constraints. Combined with tight color domain reduction and an incremental SAT-solving strategy, the proposed formulation significantly prunes the search space and enables efficient exact optimization. Experimental results on the GEOM and MS-CAP benchmark suites demonstrate substantial improvements over previous exact approaches. On the challenging GEOM benchmark, the proposed framework proves optimality for more instances within only one hour of computation than the previous CP/IP approach, which required a 48-hour time limit, while also verifying the optimality of several previously reported best-known solutions. These results demonstrate that SAT-based reasoning provides an effective exact optimization framework for the BMCP and substantially expands the range of benchmark instances whose optimality can be certified.