Stable Flows over Time

Abstract

In this paper, the notion of stability is extended to network flows over time. As a useful device in our proofs, we present an elegant preflow-push variant of the Gale-Shapley algorithm that operates directly on the given network and computes stable flows in pseudo-polynomial time, both in the static flow and the flow over time case. We show periodical properties of stable flows over time on networks with an infinite time horizon. Finally, we discuss the influence of storage at vertices, with different results depending on the priority of the corresponding holdover edges.

Keywords

• stable matchings
• stable flows
• flows over time