Algorithmic aspects of partial convexity

A characterization ofC-semispaces of partial convexity is obtained. An estimate of the number ofC-semispaces in the case of finitely many directions of partial convexity is given. A polynomial algorithm for the enumeration ofC-semispaces is developed. The problem of recognizing approximations of partially convex hulls generated by intersections ofC-semispaces is proved to be NP-complete. Translated fromMatematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 68, No. 3, pp. 399–410, September, 2000.     

Class Steiner trees and VLSI-design

We consider a generalized version of the Steiner problem in graphs, motivated by the wire routing phase in physical VLSI design: given a connected, undirected distance graph with required classes of vertices and Steiner vertices, find a shortest connected subgraph containing at least one vertex of each required class. We show that this problem is NP-hard, even if there are no Steiner vertices and the graph is a tree. Moreover, the same complexity result holds if the input class Steiner graph additionally is embedded in a unit grid, if each vertex has degree at most three, and each class consists of no more than three vertices. For similar restricted versions, we prove MAX SNP-hardness and we show that there exists no polynomial-time approximation algorithm with a constant bound on the relative error, unless P = NP. We propose two efficient heuristics computing different approximate solutions in time O(¦E¦+¦V¦log¦V¦) and in time O(c(¦E¦+¦V¦log¦V¦)), respectively, where E is the set of edges in the given graph, V is the set of vertices, and c is the number of classes. We present some promising implementation results. kw]Steiner Tree; Heuristic; Approximation complexity; MAX-SNP-hardness     

Chemical trees enumeration algorithms

In the chemical community the need for representing chemical structures within a given family and of efficiently enumerating these structures suggested the use of computers and the implementation of fast enumeration algorithms. This paper considers the isomeric acyclic structures focusing on the enumeration of the alkane molecular family. For this family, Trinajsti et al. (1991) devised an enumeration algorithm which is the most widely known and utilized nowadays. Kvasnika and Pospichal (1991) have proposed an algorithmic scheme which, from the computational complexity point of view, can prove to be more efficient than the Trinajsti one, nevertheless, this algorithm, to the best of our knowledge, has never been implemented. Indeed an efficient implementation requires the introduction of non trivial data structures and other computational tricks. The main contribution of this paper consists of the definition of the implementation details of Kvasnika-Pospichals algorithm, in a comparison of Trinajstis, Kvasnika-Pospichals and two new algorithms, proposed here, in terms of both computational complexity analysis and running times.AMS classification: 05A15, 05C05, 05C30, 05C90Part of this work has been developed during a visit of the first two authors at the EPFL of Lausanne     

On Steiner trees and minimum spanning trees in hypergraphs

The bottleneck of the state-of-the-art algorithms for geometric Steiner problems is usually the concatenation phase, where the prevailing approach treats the generated full Steiner trees as edges of a hypergraph and uses an LP-relaxation of the minimum spanning tree in hypergraph (MSTH) problem. We study this original and some new equivalent relaxations of this problem and clarify their relations to all classical relaxations of the Steiner problem. In an experimental study, an algorithm of ours which is designed for general graphs turns out to be an efficient alternative to the MSTH approach.     

On component-size bounded Steiner trees

A Steiner tree is a tree interconnecting a given set of points in a metric space such that all leaves are given points. A (full) component of a Steiner tree is a subtree which results from splitting the Steiner tree at some given points. A k-size Steiner tree is a Steiner tree in which every component has at most k given points. The k-Steiner ratio is the largest lower bound for the ratio between lengths of a minimum Steiner tree and a minimum k-size Steiner tree for the same set of points. In this paper, we determine the 3-Steiner ratio in weighted graphs.     

Steiner minimal trees for regular polygons

Fifty years ago Jarnik and Kössler showed that a Steiner minimal tree for the vertices of a regularn-gon contains Steiner points for 3 n5 and contains no Steiner point forn=6 andn13. We complete the story by showing that the case for 7n12 is the same asn13. We also show that the set ofn equally spaced points yields the longest Steiner minimal tree among all sets ofn cocircular points on a given circle.     

A bijective enumeration of tiered trees

Tiered trees were introduced by Dugan–Glennon–Gunnells–Steingrímsson as a generalization of intransitive trees that were introduced by Postnikov, the latter of which have exactly two tiers. Tiered trees arise naturally in counting the absolutely indecomposable representations of certain quivers, and enumerating torus orbits on certain homogeneous varieties over finite fields. By employing generating function arguments and geometric results, Dugan et al. derived an elegant formula concerning the enumeration of tiered trees, which is a generalization of Postnikov’s formula for intransitive trees. In this paper, we provide a bijective proof of this formula by establishing a bijection between tiered trees and certain rooted labeled trees. As an application, our bijection also enables us to derive a refinement of the enumeration of tiered trees with respect to level of the node 1.     

Steiner trees for fixed orientation metrics

We consider the problem of constructing Steiner minimum trees for a metric defined by a polygonal unit circle (corresponding to σ ≥ 2 weighted legal orientations in the plane). A linear-time algorithm to enumerate all angle configurations for degree three Steiner points is given. We provide a simple proof that the angle configuration for a Steiner point extends to all Steiner points in a full Steiner minimum tree, such that at most six orientations suffice for edges in a full Steiner minimum tree. We show that the concept of canonical forms originally introduced for the uniform orientation metric generalises to the fixed orientation metric. Finally, we give an O(σ n) time algorithm to compute a Steiner minimum tree for a given full Steiner topology with n terminal leaves.     

Steiner minimal trees for bar waves

A Steiner minimal tree (SMT) for a set of pointsP in the plane is a shortest network interconnectingP. The construction of a SMT for a general setP is known to be anNP-complete problem. Recently, SMTs have been constructed for special setsP such as ladders, splitting trees, zigzag lines and co-circular points. In this paper we study SMTs for a wide class of point-sets called mild bar wave. We show that a SMT for a mild bar wave must assume a special form, thus the number of trees needed to be inspected is greatly reduced. Furthermore if a mild bar wave is also a mild rectangular wave, then we produce a Steiner tree constructible in linear time whose length can exceed that of a SMT by an amount bounded by the difference in heights of the two endpoints of the rectangular wave, thus independent of the number of points. When a rectangular wave satisfies some other conditions (including ladders as special cases), then the Steiner tree we produced is indeed a SMT.     

Packing Steiner trees: polyhedral investigations

LetG=(V, E) be a graph andT⊆V be a node set. We call an edge setS a Steiner tree forT ifS connects all pairs of nodes inT. In this paper we address the following problem, which we call the weighted Steiner tree packing problem. Given a graphG=(V, E) with edge weightsw _e , edge capacitiesc _e ,e∈E, and node setT ₁,…,T _N , find edge setsS ₁,…,S _N such that eachS _k is a Steiner tree forT _k , at mostc _e of these edge sets use edgee for eache∈E, and the sum of the weights of the edge sets is minimal. Our motivation for studying this problem arises from a routing problem in VLSI-design, where given sets of points have to be connected by wires. We consider the Steiner tree packing problem from a polyhedral point of view and define an associated polyhedron, called the Steiner tree packing polyhedron. The goal of this paper is to (partially) describe this polyhedron by means of inequalities. It turns out that, under mild assumptions, each inequality that defines a facet for the (single) Steiner tree polyhedron can be lifted to a facet-defining inequality for the Steiner tree packing polyhedron. The main emphasis of this paper lies on the presentation of so-called joint inequalities that are valid and facet-defining for this polyhedron. Inequalities of this kind involve at least two Steiner trees. The classes of inequalities we have found form the basis of a branch & cut algorithm. This algorithm is described in our companion paper (in this issue).     

A partition-based relaxation for Steiner trees

The Steiner tree problem is a classical NP-hard optimization problem with a wide range of practical applications. In an instance of this problem, we are given an undirected graph G = (V, E), a set of terminals \({R\subseteq V}\) , and non-negative costs c _e for all edges \({e \in E}\) . Any tree that contains all terminals is called a Steiner tree; the goal is to find a minimum-cost Steiner tree. The vertices \({V \backslash R}\) are called Steiner vertices. The best approximation algorithm known for the Steiner tree problem is a greedy algorithm due to Robins and Zelikovsky (SIAM J Discrete Math 19(1):122–134, 2005); it achieves a performance guarantee of \({1+\frac{\ln 3}{2}\approx 1.55}\) . The best known linear programming (LP)-based algorithm, on the other hand, is due to Goemans and Bertsimas (Math Program 60:145–166, 1993) and achieves an approximation ratio of 2?2/|R|. In this paper we establish a link between greedy and LP-based approaches by showing that Robins and Zelikovsky’s algorithm can be viewed as an iterated primal-dual algorithm with respect to a novel LP relaxation. The LP used in the first iteration is stronger than the well-known bidirected cut relaxation. An instance is b-quasi-bipartite if each connected component of \({G \backslash R}\) has at most b vertices. We show that Robins’ and Zelikovsky’s algorithm has an approximation ratio better than \({1+\frac{\ln 3}{2}}\) for such instances, and we prove that the integrality gap of our LP is between \({\frac{8}{7}}\) and \({\frac{2b+1}{b+1}}\) .     

Gradient-constrained discounted Steiner trees II: optimally locating a discounted Steiner point

A gradient-constrained discounted Steiner tree is a network interconnecting given set of nodes in Euclidean space where the gradients of the edges are all no more than an upper bound which defines the maximum gradient. In such a tree, the costs are associated with its edges and values are associated with nodes and are discounted over time. In this paper, we study the problem of optimally locating a single Steiner point in the presence of the gradient constraint in a tree so as to maximize the sum of all the discounted cash flows, known as the net present value (NPV). An edge in the tree is labelled as a b edge, or a m edge, or an f edge if the gradient between its endpoints is greater than, or equal to, or less than the maximum gradient respectively. The set of edge labels at a discounted Steiner point is called its labelling. The optimal location of the discounted Steiner point is obtained for the labellings that can occur in a gradient-constrained discounted Steiner tree. In this paper, we propose the gradient-constrained discounted Steiner point algorithm to optimally locate the discounted Steiner point in the presence of a gradient constraint in a network. This algorithm is applied to a case study. This problem occurs in underground mining, where we focus on the optimization of underground mine access to obtain maximum NPV in the presence of a gradient constraint. The gradient constraint defines the navigability conditions for trucks along the underground tunnels.     

Algorithmic aspects of clique-transversal and clique-independent sets

A minimum clique-transversal set MCT(G) of a graph G=(V,E) is a set SV of minimum cardinality that meets all maximal cliques in G. A maximum clique-independent set MCI(G) of G is a set of maximum number of pairwise vertex-disjoint maximal cliques. We prove that the problem of finding an MCT(G) and an MCI(G) is NP-hard for cocomparability, planar, line and total graphs. As an interesting corollary we obtain that the problem of finding a minimum number of elements of a poset to meet all maximal antichains of the poset remains NP-hard even if the poset has height two, thereby generalizing a result of Duffas et al. (J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 58 (1991) 158–164). We present a polynomial algorithm for the above problems on Helly circular-arc graphs which is the first such algorithm for a class of graphs that is not clique-perfect. We also present polynomial algorithms for the weighted version of the clique-transversal problem on strongly chordal graphs, chordal graphs of bounded clique size, and cographs. The algorithms presented run in linear time for strongly chordal graphs and cographs. These mark the first attempts at the weighted version of the problem.     

On better heuristics for Steiner minimum trees

Finding a shortest network interconnecting a given set of points in a metric space is called the Steiner minimum tree problem. The Steiner ratio is the largest lower bound for the ratio between lengths of a Steiner minimum tree and a minimum spanning tree for the same set of points. In this paper, we show that in a metric space, if the Steiner ratio is less than one and finding a Steiner minimum tree for a set of size bounded by a fixed number can be performed in polynomial time, then there exists a polynomialtime heuristic for the Steiner minimum tree problem with performance ratio bigger than the Steiner ratio. It follows that in the Euclidean plane, there exists a polynomial-time heuristic for Steiner minimum trees with performance ratio bigger than . This solves a long-standing open problem.Part of this work was done while this author visited the Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, supported in part by DIMACS (Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, under NSF grant STC88-09648, supported in part by NSF grant No. CCR-8920505, and also supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.     

On Steiner trees for bounded point sets

Geometriae Dedicata -     

Generating all the Steiner trees and computing Steiner intervals for a fixed number of terminals

In this work we present an enumeration algorithm for the generation of all Steiner trees containing a given set W of terminals of an unweighted graph G such that $|W|=k$, for a fixed positive integer k. The enumeration is performed within $O(n)$ delay, where $n=|V(G)|$ consequence of the algorithm is that the Steiner interval and the strong Steiner interval of a subset $W\subseteq V(G)$ can be computed in polynomial time, provided that the size of W is bounded by a constant.     

Steiner minimal trees on sets of four points

LetS = {A, B, C, D} consist of the four corner points of a convex quadrilateral where diagonals [A, C] and [B, D] intersect at the pointO. There are two possible full Steiner trees forS, theAB-CD tree hasA andB adjacent to one Steiner point, andC andD to another; theAD-BC tree hasA andD adjacent to one Steiner point, andB andC to another. Pollak proved that if both full Steiner trees exist, then theAB-CD (AD-BC) tree is the Steiner minimal tree if AOD>3 (<) 90°, and both are Steiner minimal trees if AOD=90°. While the theorem has been crucially used in obtaining results on Steiner minimal trees in general, its applicability is sometimes restricted because of the condition that both full Steiner trees must exist. In this paper we remove this obstacle by showing: (i) Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of either full Steiner tree forS. (ii) If AOD90°, then theAB-CD tree is the SMT even if theAD-BC tree does not exist. (iii) If AOD<90° but theAD-BC tree does not exist, then theAB-CD tree cannot be ruled out as a Steiner minimal tree, though under certain broad conditions it can.     

Total dominating functions in trees: Minimality and convexity

A total dominating function (TDF) of a graph G = (V, E) is a function f: V ← [0, 1] such that for each v ? V, Σ_u?N(v) f(u) ≥ 1 (where N(v) denotes the set of neighbors of vertex v). Convex combinations of TDFs are also TDFs. However, convex combinations of minimal TDFs (i.e., MTDFs) are not necessarily minimal. In this paper we discuss the existence in trees of a universal MTDF (i.e., an MTDF whose convex combinations with any other MTDF are also minimal). © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Rectilinear group Steiner trees and applications in VLSI design

 Given a set of disjoint groups of points in the plane, the rectilinear group Steiner tree problem is the problem of finding a shortest interconnection (under the rectilinear metric) which includes at least one point from each group. This is an important generalization of the well-known rectilinear Steiner tree problem which has direct applications in VLSI design: in the detailed routing phase the logical units typically allow the nets to connect to several electrically equivalent ports. We present a first (tailored) exact algorithm for solving the rectilinear group Steiner tree problem (and related variants of the problem). The algorithm essentially constructs a subgraph of the corresponding Hanan grid on which existing algorithms for solving the Steiner tree problem in graphs are applied. The reductions of the Hanan grid are performed by applying point deletions and by generating full Steiner trees on the remaining points. Experimental results for real-world VLSI instances with up to 100 groups are presented. Received: November 7, 2000 / Accepted: December 19, 2001 Published online: September 5, 2002