A minimum spanning tree (MST) with a small diameter is required in numerous practical situations. It is needed, for example, in distributed mutual exclusion algorithms in order to minimize the number of messages communicated among processors per critical section. Understanding the behavior of tree diameter is useful, for example, in determining an upper bound on the expected number of links between two arbitrary documents on the World Wide Web. The DiameterConstrained MST (DCMST) problem can be stated as follows: given an undirected, edge-weighted graph G with n nodes and a positive integer k, find a spanning tree with the smallest weight among all spanning trees of G which contain no path with more than k edges. This problem is known to be NP-complete, for all values of k; 4 k #n - 2). In this paper, we investigate the behavior of the diameter of MST in randomly-weighted complete graphs (in Erds-Rnyi sense) and explore heuristics for the DCMST problem. For the case when the diameter bound k is small---independent of n, we present a one-time-tree-construction (OTTC) algorithm. It constructs a DCMST in a modified greedy fashion, employing a heuristic for selecting an edge to be added to the tree at each stage of the tree construction. This algorithm is fast and easily parallelizable. We also present a second algorithm that outperforms OTTC for larger values of k. It starts by generating an unconstrained MST and iteratively refines it by replacing edges, one by one, in the middle of long paths in the spanning tree until there is no path left with more than k edges. As expected, the performance of this heuristic is determined by the diameter of the unconstrained MST in the given graph. We discuss convergence, relative merits, and implementation of t...

In numerous practical applications, it is necessary to find the smallest possible tree with a bounded diameter. A diameter-constrained minimum spanning tree (DCMST) of a given undirected, edge-weighted graph, G, is the smallest-weight spanning tree of all spanning trees of G which contain no path with more than k edges, where k is a given positive integer. The problem of finding a DCMST is NP-complete for all values of k; 4 k (n -- 2), except when all edge-weights are identical. A DCMST is essential for the efficiency of various distributed mutual exclusion algorithms, where it can minimize the number of messages communicated among processors per critical section. It is also useful in linear lightwave networks, where it can minimize interference in the network by limiting the traffic in the network lines. Another practical application requiring a DCMST arises in data compression, where some algorithms compress a file utilizing a tree data-structure, and decompress a path in the tree to access a record. A DCMST helps such algorithms to be fast without sacrificing a lot of storage space. We present a survey of the literature on the DCMST problem, study the expected diameter of a random labeled tree, and present five new polynomial-time algorithms for an approximate DCMST. One of our new algorithms constructs an approximate DCMST in a modified greedy fashion, employing a heuristic for selecting an edge to be added to iii the tree in each stage of the construction. Three other new algorithms start with an unconstrained minimum spanning tree, and iteratively refine it into an approximate DCMST. We also present an algorithm designed for the special case when the diameter is required to be no more than 4. Such a diameter-4 tree is also used for evaluating the quality of o...

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