Application of the steiner street problem to a more economical data bus

A data bus consists of the interconnection of N terminals, each of which is connected to every other terminal. There are three fundamental approaches to the topology of the network: (1) the tee network, for which the connecting nodes coincide with the communicating nodes; (2) the star network, for which there is only one connection node, which may not coincide with a communication node; and (3) the Steiner minimal tree network, for which there can be many nodes, each of which is difficult to locate in the x-y plane. The tee and star approaches are receiving most attention but the third is the only one that economizes on the use of cable (glass fiber waveguide). After a discussion of the tee and star networks, we turn to the Steiner minimal tree network and a method of locating the connecting nodes so that the total amount of cable is minimized.