The Voronoi diagram is a fundamental structure in computationalgeometry and arises naturally in many different fields. This chapter surveys properties of the Voronoi diagram and its geometric dual, the Delaunay triangulation. The emphasis is on practical algorithms for the construction of Voronoi diagrams. 1 Introduction Let S be a set of n points in d-dimensional euclidean space E d . The points of S are called sites. The Voronoi diagram of S splits E d into regions with one region for each site, so that the points in the region for site s2S are closer to s than to any other site in S. The Delaunay triangulation of S is the unique triangulation of S so that there are no elements of S inside the circumsphere of any triangle. Here `triangulation' is extended from the planar usage to arbitrary dimension: a triangulation decomposes the convex hull of S into simplices using elements of S as vertices. The existence and uniqueness of the Delaunay triangulation are perhaps not obvio...

We survey results in geometric network design theory, including algorithms for constructing minimum spanning trees and low-dilation graphs. 1 Introduction This survey covers topics in geometric network design theory. The problem is easy to state: connect a collection of sites by a "good" network. For instance, one may wish to connect components of a VLSI circuit by networks of wires, in a way that uses little surface area on the chip, draws little power, and propagates signals quickly. Similar problems come up in other applications such as telecommunications, road network design, and medical imaging [1]. One network design problem, the Traveling Salesman problem, is sufficiently important to have whole books devoted to it [79]. Problems involving some form of geometric minimum or maximum spanning tree also arise in the solution of other geometric problems such as clustering [12], mesh generation [56], and robot motion planning [93]. One can vary the network design problem in many w...

Euclidean spanners are important data structures in geometric algorithm design, because they provide a means of approximating the complete Euclidean graph with only O(n) edges, so that the shortest path length between each pair of points is not more than a constant factor longer than the Euclidean distance between the points. In many applications of spanners, it is important that the spanner possess a number of additional properties: low tot al edge weight, bounded degree, and low diameter. Existing research on spanners has considered one property or the other. We show that it is possible to build spanners in optimal O(n log n) time and O(n) space that achieve optimal or near optimal tradeoffs between all combinations of these

Let G = (V

This is the preliminary version of a chapter that will appear in the Handbook on Computational Geometry, edited by J.-R. Sack and J. Urrutia. A comprehensive overview is given of algorithms and data structures for proximity problems on point sets in IR D . In particular, the closest pair problem, the exact and approximate post-office problem, and the problem of constructing spanners are discussed in detail. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 The static closest pair problem 4 2.1 Preliminary remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2 Algorithms that are optimal in the algebraic computation tree model . 5 2.2.1 An algorithm based on the Voronoi diagram . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2.2 A divide-and-conquer algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2.3 A plane sweep algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3 A deterministic algorithm that uses indirect addressing . . . . . . . . . 7 2.3.1 The degraded grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

We show how to apply the well-separated pair decomposition of a point-set P in ! d to significantly improve known time bounds on several geometric graph problems. We first present an algorithm to find an approximate Euclidean minimum spanning tree of P whose weight is at most 1 + ffl times the exact minimum. We achieve a time complexity of O(n log n + (ffl \Gammad=2 log 1 ffl )n), improving the best known bound of O(ffl \Gammad n log n). We then show how to construct a graph with O(ffl \Gammad+1 n) edges in which the shortest path between any pair of points is within 1 + ffl of the Euclidean distance. Our time complexity is O(n log n+(ffl \Gammad log 1 ffl )n), a significant improvement over the best previous algorithm that produces a graph of this size. Finally, we show how to compute the exact Euclidean minimum spanning tree in time O(T d (n; n) log n), where T d (m; n) is the time to find the bichromatic closest pair between m red points and n blue points. The previo...

This paper proposes new methods to answer approximate nearest neighbor queries on a set of n points in d-dimensional Euclidean space. For any fixed constant d, a data structure with O(" (1\Gammad)=2 n log n) preprocessing time and O(" (1\Gammad)=2 log n) query time achieves approximation factor 1 + " for any given 0 ! " ! 1; a variant reduces the "-dependence by a factor of " \Gamma1=2 . For any arbitrary d, a data structure with O(d 2 n log n) preprocessing time and O(d 2 log n) query time achieves approximation factor O(d 3=2 ). Applications to various proximity problems are discussed. 1 Introduction Let P be a set of n point sites in d-dimensional space IR d . In the well-known post office problem, we want to preprocess P into a data structure so that a site closest to a given query point q (called the nearest neighbor of q) can be found efficiently. Distances are measured under the Euclidean metric. The post office problem has many applications within computational...

Let S be a set of n points in IR d and let t ? 1 be a real number. A t-spanner for S is a directed graph having the points of S as its vertices, such that for any pair p and q of points there is a path from p to q of length at most t times the Euclidean distance between p and q. Such a path is called a t-spanner path. The spanner diameter of such a spanner is defined as the smallest integer D such that for any pair p and q of points there is a t-spanner path from p to q containing at most D edges. Randomized and deterministic algorithms are given for constructing t-spanners consisting of O(n) edges and having O(logn) diameter. Also, it is shown how to maintain the randomized t-spanner under random insertions and deletions. Previously, no results were known for spanners with low spanner diameter and for maintaining spanners under insertions and deletions. 1 Introduction Given a set S of n points in IR d and a real number t ? 1, a t-spanner for S is a directed graph on S such th...

Abstract We give a simple algorithm to find a spanning tree that simultaneously approximates a shortest-path tree and a minimum spanning tree. The algorithm provides a continuous trade-off: given the two trees and a fl? 0, the algorithm returns a spanning tree in which the distance between any vertex and the root of the shortest-path tree is at most 1 + p 2fl times the shortest-path distance, and yet the total weight of the tree is at most 1 + p 2=fl times the weight of a minimum spanning tree. Our algorithm runs in linear time and obtains the best-possible trade-off. It can be implemented on a CREW PRAM to run in logarithmic time using one processor per vertex.

Let S be a set of n points in IR d and let t ? 1 be a real number. A t-spanner for S is a graph having the points of S as its vertices such that for any pair p; q of points there is a path between them of length at most t times the Euclidean distance between p and q. An efficient implementation of a greedy algorithm is given that constructs a t-spanner having bounded degree such that the total length of all its edges is bounded by O(log n) times the length of a minimum spanning tree for S. The algorithm has running time O(n log d n). Applying recent results of Das, Narasimhan and Salowe to this t-spanner gives an O(n log d n) time algorithm for constructing a t-spanner having bounded degree and whose total edge length is proportional to the length of a minimum spanning tree for S. Previously, no o(n 2 ) time algorithms were known for constructing a t-spanner of bounded degree. In the final part of the paper, an application to the problem of distance enumeration is...