Two new criteria for finding Steiner hulls in Steiner tree problems

The Steiner tree problem considered in this paper is that of finding a network of minimum length connecting a given setK of terminals in a regionR of the Euclidean plane. ASteiner hull forK inR is any subregion ofR known to contain a Steiner tree forK inR. Two new criteria are given for finding Steiner hulls—one for the Steiner tree problem on plane graphs and one for the rectilinear Steiner tree problem—which strengthen known polynomial-time methods of finding Steiner hulls.     

Iterated local search algorithms for the Euclidean Steiner tree problem in n dimensions

We propose algorithmic frameworks based on the iterated local search (ILS) metaheuristic to obtain good‐quality solutions for the Euclidean Steiner tree problem (ESTP) in n dimensions. This problem consists in finding a tree with minimal total length that spans p points given in an n‐dimensional Euclidean space and, eventually, also some additional points whose insertion contributes to reduce the total length of the tree. These ILS approaches make use of both the tree enumeration structure, called topology‐describing vector, and the exact minimization step of a well‐known branch‐and‐bound method for the ESTP. Computational results are provided.     

On the partial terminal Steiner tree problem

We investigate a practical variant of the well-known graph Steiner tree problem. For a complete graph G = ( V,E ) with length function l:E → R ⁺ and two vertex subsets R ⊂ V and R ′ ⊆ R, a partial terminal Steiner tree is a Steiner tree which contains all vertices in R such that all vertices in R ∖ R ′ belong to the leaves of this Steiner tree. The partial terminal Steiner tree problem is to find a partial terminal Steiner tree T whose total lengths ∑ _{(u,v) ∈T} l ( u,v ) is minimum. In this paper, we show that the problem is both NP-complete and MAX SNP-hard when the lengths of edges are restricted to either 1 or 2. We also provide an approximation algorithm for the problem.

On approximation algorithms for the terminal Steiner tree problem

The terminal Steiner tree problem is a special version of the Steiner tree problem, where a Steiner minimum tree has to be found in which all terminals are leaves. We prove that no polynomial time approximation algorithm for the terminal Steiner tree problem can achieve an approximation ratio less than (1−o(1))lnn unless NP has slightly superpolynomial time algorithms. Moreover, we present a polynomial time approximation algorithm for the metric version of this problem with a performance ratio of 2ρ, where ρ denotes the best known approximation ratio for the Steiner tree problem. This improves the previously best known approximation ratio for the metric terminal Steiner tree problem of ρ+2.     

A factoring approach for the Steiner tree problem in undirected networks

In communication networks, many applications, such as video on demand and video conferencing, must establish a communications tree that spans a subset K in a vertex set. The source node can then send identical data to all nodes in set K along this tree. This kind of communication is known as multicast communication. A network optimization problem, called the Steiner tree problem (STP), is presented to find a least cost multicasting tree. In this paper, an O(|E|) algorithm is presented to find a minimum Steiner tree for series-parallel graphs where |E| is the number of edges. Based on this algorithm, we proposed an O(2^2c·|E|) algorithm to solve the Steiner tree problem for general graphs where c is the number of applied factoring procedures. The c value is strongly related to the topology of a given graph. This is quite different from other algorithms with exponential time complexities in |K|.     

Fast heuristic algorithms for rectilinear steiner trees

A fundamental problem in circuit design is how to connectn points in the plane, to make them electrically common using the least amount of wire. The tree formed, a Steiner tree, is usually constructed with respect to the rectilinear metric. The problem is known to be NP-complete; an extensive review of proposed heuristics is given. An early algorithm by Hanan is shown to have anO(n logn) time implementation using computational geometry techniques. The algorithm can be modified to do sequential searching inO(n ²) total time. However, it is shown that the latter approach runs inO(n ^3/2) expected time, forn points selected from anm×m grid. Empirical results are presented for problems up to 10,000 points.     

Canonical Forms and Algorithms for Steiner Trees in Uniform Orientation Metrics

We present some fundamental structural properties for minimum length networks (known as Steiner minimum trees) interconnecting a given set of points in an environment in which edge segments are restricted to λ uniformly oriented directions. We show that the edge segments of any full component of such a tree contain a total of at most four directions if λ is not a multiple of 3, or six directions if λ is a multiple of 3. This result allows us to develop useful canonical forms for these full components. The structural properties of these Steiner minimum trees are then used to resolve an important open problem in the area: does there exist a polynomial time algorithm for constructing a Steiner minimum tree if the topology of the tree is known? We obtain a simple linear time algorithm for constructing a Steiner minimum tree for any given set of points and a given Steiner topology.     

On exact solutions to the Euclidean bottleneck Steiner tree problem

We study the Euclidean bottleneck Steiner tree problem: given a set P of n points in the Euclidean plane and a positive integer k, find a Steiner tree with at most k Steiner points such that the length of the longest edge in the tree is minimized. This problem is known to be NP-hard even to approximate within ratio and there was no known exact algorithm even for k=1 prior to this work. In this paper, we focus on finding exact solutions to the problem for a small constant k. Based on geometric properties of optimal location of Steiner points, we present an optimal -time exact algorithm for k=1 and an O(n²)-time algorithm for k=2. Also, we present an optimal -time exact algorithm for any constant k for a special case where there is no edge between Steiner points.     

Approximation Schemes for Node-Weighted Geometric Steiner Tree Problems

In this paper we introduce a new technique for approximation schemes for geometrical optimization problems. As an example problem, we consider the following variant of the geometric Steiner tree problem. Every point u which is not included in the tree costs a penalty of π(u) units. Furthermore, every Steiner point that we use costs c _S units. The goal is to minimize the total length of the tree plus the penalties. Our technique yields a polynomial time approximation scheme for the problem, if the points lie in the plane. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, 2005, 221–232.     

The General Steiner Tree-Star problem

The Steiner tree problem is defined as follows—given a graph G=(V,E) and a subset X⊂V of terminals, compute a minimum cost tree that includes all nodes in X. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that the edge costs form a metric. This problem is NP-hard and has been the study of many heuristics and algorithms. We study a generalization of this problem, where there is a “switch” cost in addition to the cost of the edges. Switches are placed at internal nodes of the tree (essentially, we may assume that all non-leaf nodes of the Steiner tree have a switch). The cost for placing a switch may vary from node to node. A restricted version of this problem, where the terminal set X cannot be connected to each other directly but only via the Steiner nodes V?X, is referred to as the Steiner Tree-Star problem. The General Steiner Tree-Star problem does not require the terminal set and Steiner node set to be disjoint. This generalized problem can be reduced to the node weighted Steiner tree problem, for which algorithms with performance guarantees of Θ(lnn) are known. However, such approach does not make use of the fact that the edge costs form a metric. In this paper we derive approximation algorithms with small constant factors for this problem. We show two different polynomial time algorithms with approximation factors of 5.16 and 5.     

How to find Steiner minimal trees in euclideand-space

This paper has two purposes. The first is to present a new way to find a Steiner minimum tree (SMT) connectingN sites ind-space,d >- 2. We present (in Appendix 1) a computer code for this purpose. This is the only procedure known to the author for finding Steiner minimal trees ind-space ford > 2, and also the first one which fits naturally into the framework of backtracking and branch-and-bound. Finding SMTs of up toN = 12 general sites ind-space (for anyd) now appears feasible.We tabulate Steiner minimal trees for many point sets, including the vertices of most of the regular and Archimedeand-polytopes with <- 16 vertices. As a consequence of these tables, the Gilbert-Pollak conjecture is shown to be false in dimensions 3–9. (The conjecture remains open in other dimensions; it is probably false in all dimensionsd withd 3, but it is probably true whend = 2.)The second purpose is to present some new theoretical results regarding the asymptotic computational complexity of finding SMTs to precision .We show that in two-dimensions, Steiner minimum trees may be found exactly in exponential time O(C ^N ) on a real RAM. (All previous provable time bounds were superexponential.) If the tree is only wanted to precision , then there is an (N/)^O(N)-time algorithm, which is subexponential if 1/ grows only polynomially withN. Also, therectilinear Steiner minimal tree ofN points in the plane may be found inN ^O(N) time.J. S. Provan devised an O(N ⁶/⁴)-time algorithm for finding the SMT of a convexN-point set in the plane. (Also the rectilinear SMT of such a set may be found in O(N ⁶) time.) One therefore suspects that this problem may be solved exactly in polynomial time. We show that this suspicion is in fact true—if a certain conjecture about the size of Steiner sensitivity diagrams is correct.All of these algorithms are for a real RAM model of computation allowing infinite precision arithmetic. They make no probabilistic or other assumptions about the input; the time bounds are valid in the worst case; and all our algorithms may be implemented with a polynomial amount of space. Only algorithms yielding theexact optimum SMT, or trees with lengths (1 + ) × optimum, where is arbitrarily small, are considered here.     

Concatenation-Based Greedy Heuristics for the Euclidean Steiner Tree Problem

We present a class of O(n log n) heuristics for the Steiner tree problem in the Euclidean plane. These heuristics identify a small number of subsets with few, geometrically close, terminals using minimum spanning trees and other well-known structures from computational geometry: Delaunay triangulations, Gabriel graphs, relative neighborhood graphs, and higher-order Voronoi diagrams. Full Steiner trees of all these subsets are sorted according to some appropriately chosen measure of quality. A tree spanning all terminals is constructed using greedy concatenation. New heuristics are compared with each other and with heuristics from the literature by performing extensive computational experiments on both randomly generated and library problem instances. Received October 27, 1997; revised May 7, 1998.     

A note on the terminal Steiner tree problem

In 2002, Lin and Xue [Inform. Process. Lett. 84 (2002) 103-107] introduced a variant of the graph Steiner tree problem, in which each terminal vertex is required to be a leaf in the solution Steiner tree. They presented a ρ+2 approximation algorithm, where ρ is the approximation ratio of the best known efficient algorithm for the regular graph Steiner tree problem. In this note, we derive a simplified algorithm with an improved approximation ratio of 2ρ (currently ρ≈1.550, see [SODA 2000, 2000, pp. 770-790]).     

Approximation Algorithm for Bottleneck Steiner Tree Problem in the Euclidean Plane

A special case of thebottleneck Steiner tree problem in the Euclidean plane was considered in this paper. The problem has applications in the design of wireless communication networks, multifacility location, VLSI routing and network routing. For the special case which requires that there should be no edge connecting any two Steiner points in the optimal solution, a 3-restricted Steiner tree can be found indicating the existence of the performance ratio √2. In this paper, the special case of the problem is proved to beNP-hard and cannot be approximated within ratio √2. First a simple polynomial time approximation algorithm with performance ratio √2 is presented. Then based on this algorithm and the existence of the 3-restricted Steiner tree, a polynomial time approximation algorithm with performance ratio—√2+∈ is proposed, for any ∈>0. Supported partially by Shandong Province Excellent Middle-Aged and Young Scientists Encouragement Fund (Grant No.03BS004) and the Ministry of Education Study Abroad Returnees Research Start-up Fund, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.60273032).     

Improved computation of plane Steiner Minimal Trees

ASteiner Minimal Tree (SMT) for a given setA = {a ₁,...,a _n } in the plane is a tree which interconnects these points and whose total length, i.e., the sum of lengths of the branches, is minimum. To achieve the minimum, the tree may contain other points (Steiner points) besidesa ₁,...,a _n . Various improvements are presented to an earlier computer program of the authors for plane SMTs. These changes have radically reduced machine times. The existing program was limited in application to aboutn = 30, while the innovations have facilitated solution of many randomly generated 100-point problems in reasonable processing times.This work was supported by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Council under Grant Numbers A-7544 and A-7558.     

On the terminal Steiner tree problem

We investigate a practical variant of the well-known graph Steiner tree problem. In this variant, every target vertex is required to be a leaf vertex in the solution Steiner tree. We present hardness results for this variant as well as a polynomial time approximation algorithm with performance ratio ρ+2, where ρ is the best-known approximation ratio for the graph Steiner tree problem.     

Expansion of Linear Steiner Trees

A Steiner tree T on a given set of points A is called linear if all Steiner points, including those collapsing into their adjacent given points, lie on one path referred to as its trunk. Suppose A is a simple polygonal line. Roughly speaking, T is similar to A if its trunk turns right or left when A does. In this paper we prove that A can be expanded to another polygonal line, and T can be constructed in linear time using this expansion method. Received January 15, 1995; revised November 19, 1995, and February 3, 1996.     

How to find Steiner minimal trees in euclideand-space

This paper has two purposes. The first is to present a new way to find a Steiner minimum tree (SMT) connectingN sites ind-space,d >- 2. We present (in Appendix 1) a computer code for this purpose. This is the only procedure known to the author for finding Steiner minimal trees ind-space ford > 2, and also the first one which fits naturally into the framework of “backtracking” and “branch-and-bound.” Finding SMTs of up toN = 12 general sites ind-space (for anyd) now appears feasible. We tabulate Steiner minimal trees for many point sets, including the vertices of most of the regular and Archimedeand-polytopes with <- 16 vertices. As a consequence of these tables, the Gilbert-Pollak conjecture is shown to be false in dimensions 3–9. (The conjecture remains open in other dimensions; it is probably false in all dimensionsd withd ≥ 3, but it is probably true whend = 2.) The second purpose is to present some new theoretical results regarding the asymptotic computational complexity of finding SMTs to precision ?. We show that in two-dimensions, Steiner minimum trees may be found exactly in exponential time O(C ^N ) on a real RAM. (All previous provable time bounds were superexponential.) If the tree is only wanted to precision ?, then there is an (N/?)^O(√N)-time algorithm, which is subexponential if 1/? grows only polynomially withN. Also, therectilinear Steiner minimal tree ofN points in the plane may be found inN ^O(√N) time. J. S. Provan devised an O(N ⁶/?⁴)-time algorithm for finding the SMT of a convexN-point set in the plane. (Also the rectilinear SMT of such a set may be found in O(N ⁶) time.) One therefore suspects that this problem may be solved exactly in polynomial time. We show that this suspicion is in fact true—if a certain conjecture about the size of “Steiner sensitivity diagrams” is correct. All of these algorithms are for a “real RAM” model of computation allowing infinite precision arithmetic. They make no probabilistic or other assumptions about the input; the time bounds are valid in the worst case; and all our algorithms may be implemented with a polynomial amount of space. Only algorithms yielding theexact optimum SMT, or trees with lengths ≤ (1 + ?) × optimum, where ? is arbitrarily small, are considered here.     

A Better Constant-Factor Approximation for Selected-Internal Steiner Minimum Tree

The selected-internal Steiner minimum tree problem is a generalization of original Steiner minimum tree problem. Given a weighted complete graph G=(V,E) with weight function c, and two subsets R ^′ ⊊ R⊆V with |R−R ^′|≥2, selected-internal Steiner minimum tree problem is to find a minimum subtree T of G interconnecting R such that any leaf of T does not belong to R ^′. In this paper, suppose c is metric, we obtain a (1+ρ)-approximation algorithm for this problem, where ρ is the best-known approximation ratio for the Steiner minimum tree problem.     

A linear-time algorithm to construct a rectilinear Steiner minimal tree fork-extremal point sets

Ak-extremal point set is a point set on the boundary of ak-sided rectilinear convex hull. Given ak-extremal point set of sizen, we present an algorithm that computes a rectilinear Steiner minimal tree in timeO(k ⁴ n). For constantk, this algorithm runs inO(n) time and is asymptotically optimal and, for arbitraryk, the algorithm is the fastest known for this problem.