No Arabic abstract
Let $V$ be a finite set of vertices in the plane and $S$ be a finite set of polygonal obstacles, where the vertices of $S$ are in $V$. We show how to construct a plane $2$-spanner of the visibility graph of $V$ with respect to $S$. As this graph can have unbounded degree, we modify it in three easy-to-follow steps, in order to bound the degree to $7$ at the cost of slightly increasing the spanning ratio to 6.
Given a set $S$ of $n$ points, a weight function $w$ to associate a non-negative weight to each point in $S$, a positive integer $k ge 1$, and a real number $epsilon > 0$, we devise the following algorithms to compute a $k$-vertex fault-tolerant spanner network $G(S, E)$ for the metric space induced by the weighted points in $S$: (1) When the points in $S$ are located in a simple polygon, we present an algorithm to compute $G$ with multiplicative stretch $sqrt{10}+epsilon$, and the number of edges in $G$ (size of $G$) is $O(k n (lg{n})^2)$. (2) When the points in $S$ are located in the free space of a polygonal domain $cal P$ with $h$ number of obstacles, we present an algorithm to compute $G$ with multiplicative stretch $6+epsilon$ and size $O(sqrt{h} k n(lg{n})^2)$. (3) When the points in $S$ are located on a polyhedral terrain, we devise an algorithm to compute $G$ with multiplicative stretch $6+epsilon$ and size $O(k n (lg{n})^2)$.
The geometric $delta$-minimum spanning tree problem ($delta$-MST) is the problem of finding a minimum spanning tree for a set of points in a normed vector space, such that no vertex in the tree has a degree which exceeds $delta$, and the sum of the lengths of the edges in the tree is minimum. The similarly defined geometric $delta$-minimum bottleneck spanning tree problem ($delta$-MBST), is the problem of finding a degree bounded spanning tree such that the length of the longest edge is minimum. For point sets that lie in the Euclidean plane, both of these problems have been shown to be NP-hard for certain specific values of $delta$. In this paper, we investigate the $delta$-MBST problem in $3$-dimensional Euclidean space and $3$-dimensional rectilinear space. We show that the problems are NP-hard for certain values of $delta$, and we provide inapproximability results for these cases. We also describe new approximation algorithms for solving these $3$-dimensional variants, and then analyse their worst-case performance.
Lightness is a fundamental parameter for Euclidean spanners; it is the ratio of the spanner weight to the weight of the minimum spanning tree of a finite set of points in $mathbb{R}^d$. In a recent breakthrough, Le and Solomon (2019) established the precise dependencies on $varepsilon>0$ and $din mathbb{N}$ of the minimum lightness of $(1+varepsilon)$-spanners, and observed that additional Steiner points can substantially improve the lightness. Le and Solomon (2020) constructed Steiner $(1+varepsilon)$-spanners of lightness $O(varepsilon^{-1}logDelta)$ in the plane, where $Deltageq Omega(sqrt{n})$ is the emph{spread} of the point set, defined as the ratio between the maximum and minimum distance between a pair of points. They also constructed spanners of lightness $tilde{O}(varepsilon^{-(d+1)/2})$ in dimensions $dgeq 3$. Recently, Bhore and T{o}th (2020) established a lower bound of $Omega(varepsilon^{-d/2})$ for the lightness of Steiner $(1+varepsilon)$-spanners in $mathbb{R}^d$, for $dge 2$. The central open problem in this area is to close the gap between the lower and upper bounds in all dimensions $dgeq 2$. In this work, we show that for every finite set of points in the plane and every $varepsilon>0$, there exists a Euclidean Steiner $(1+varepsilon)$-spanner of lightness $O(varepsilon^{-1})$; this matches the lower bound for $d=2$. We generalize the notion of shallow light trees, which may be of independent interest, and use directional spanners and a modified window partitioning scheme to achieve a tight weight analysis.
In this thesis, we study two different graph problems. The first problem revolves around geometric spanners. Here, we have a set of points in the plane and we want to connect them with straight line segments, such that there is a path between each pair of points that does not make a large detour. If we achieve this, the resulting graph is called a spanner. We focus our attention on $Theta$-graphs, which are constructed by connecting each point with its nearest neighbour in a fixed number of cones. Although this construction is very straight-forward, it has proven challenging to fully determine the properties of the resulting graphs. We show that if the construction uses 5 cones, the resulting graphs are still spanners. This was the only number of cones for which this question remained unanswered. We also present a routing strategy on the half-$Theta_6$-graph, a variant of the graph with 6 cones. We show that our routing strategy finds a path whose length is at most a constant factor from the straight-line distance between the endpoints. Moreover, we show that this routing strategy is optimal. In the second part, we turn our attention to flips in triangulations. A flip is a simple operation that transforms one triangulation into another. It turns out that with enough flips, we can transform any triangulation into any other. But how many flips is enough? We present an improved upper bound of $5.2n - 33.6$ on the maximum flip distance between any pair of triangulations with n vertices. Along the way, we prove matching lower bounds on each step in the current algorithm, including a tight bound of $(3n - 9)/5$ flips needed to make a triangulation 4-connected. In addition, we prove tight $Theta(n log n)$ bounds on the number of flips required in several settings where the edges have unique labels.
In this paper, we study the online Euclidean spanners problem for points in $mathbb{R}^d$. Suppose we are given a sequence of $n$ points $(s_1,s_2,ldots, s_n)$ in $mathbb{R}^d$, where point $s_i$ is presented in step~$i$ for $i=1,ldots, n$. The objective of an online algorithm is to maintain a geometric $t$-spanner on $S_i={s_1,ldots, s_i}$ for each step~$i$. First, we establish a lower bound of $Omega(varepsilon^{-1}log n / log varepsilon^{-1})$ for the competitive ratio of any online $(1+varepsilon)$-spanner algorithm, for a sequence of $n$ points in 1-dimension. We show that this bound is tight, and there is an online algorithm that can maintain a $(1+varepsilon)$-spanner with competitive ratio $O(varepsilon^{-1}log n / log varepsilon^{-1})$. Next, we design online algorithms for sequences of points in $mathbb{R}^d$, for any constant $dge 2$, under the $L_2$ norm. We show that previously known incremental algorithms achieve a competitive ratio $O(varepsilon^{-(d+1)}log n)$. However, if the algorithm is allowed to use additional points (Steiner points), then it is possible to substantially improve the competitive ratio in terms of $varepsilon$. We describe an online Steiner $(1+varepsilon)$-spanner algorithm with competitive ratio $O(varepsilon^{(1-d)/2} log n)$. As a counterpart, we show that the dependence on $n$ cannot be eliminated in dimensions $d ge 2$. In particular, we prove that any online spanner algorithm for a sequence of $n$ points in $mathbb{R}^d$ under the $L_2$ norm has competitive ratio $Omega(f(n))$, where $lim_{nrightarrow infty}f(n)=infty$. Finally, we provide improved lower bounds under the $L_1$ norm: $Omega(varepsilon^{-2}/log varepsilon^{-1})$ in the plane and $Omega(varepsilon^{-d})$ in $mathbb{R}^d$ for $dgeq 3$.