A 4/3-approximation for Minimum Weight Edge Cover

This paper addresses the minimum weight edge cover problem (MEC), which is stated as follows: Given a graph G= (V,E), find a set of edges S:S⊆E and ∑_e∈S^w(e) e∈Q^w(e)∀Q: Q is an edge cover. Where an edge cover P is a set of edges such that ∀v∈V v is incident to at least one edge in P. An efficient implementation of a 4/3-approximation for MEC is provided. Empirical results obtained experimentally from practical data sets are reported and compared against various other approximation algorithms for MEC.