Strategies of node selection in search procedures for solving combinatorial optimization problems: A survey and a general formalization

Currently, most combinatorial optimization problems have to be solved, if the optimum solution is sought, using general techniques to explore the space of feasible solutions and, more specifically, through exploratory enumerative procedures in trees and search graphs. The objective of this work is to propose a survey and a general formalization of the selection strategy of the next node to explore, a feature that is common to all these optimization procedures.