It is a challenging task to find the k shortest paths in a time-window network. A node may only be accessible within some specific time windows. In the existing researches

an assume is made that a traveller can pass through an accessible node immediately or wait until the next accessible time window. This paper targets a more general case where a traveller

once arrived at a node

may choose to pass through the node at any d

iscrete times in the time windows of the node. In such a generalized time-window network

the complexity increases significantly

as the size of solution space soars up exponentially. By imitating the natural ripple-spreading phenomenon on a liquid surface

an effective ripple-spreading algorithm (RSA) is proposed for the

k

shortest paths problem in a generalized time-window network (

k

-SPPGTW). Besides one-to-one

k

-SPPGTW

the RSA is also extended to one-to-all

k

-SPPGTW

where all the

k

shortest paths from a given source to every other node in the network need to be found. The new method has a theoretically guaranteed optimality. The computational complexity of the RSA is

O

(

k

×

N

ATU

×

N

L

)

where

N

L

is the number of links in the network

and

N

ATU

is the average simulated time units for a ripple to travel through a link. The effectiveness and efficiency of the RSA for the

k

-SPPGTW are demonstrated by some preliminary experimental results.