Acyclic digraphs, such as the covering digraphs of ordered sets, are usually drawn upward, i.e., with the edges monotonically increasing in the vertical direction. A digraph is upward planar if it admits an upward planar drawing. In this survey paper, we overview the literature on the problem of upward planarity testing. We present several characterizations of upward planarity and describe upward planarity testing algorithms for special classes of digraphs, such as embedded digraphs and single-source digraphs. We also sketch the proof of NP-completeness of upward planarity testing.

A directed graph is upward planar if it can be drawn in the plane such that every edge is a monotonically increasing curve in the vertical direction, and no two edges cross. An undirected graph is rectilinear planar if it can be drawn in the plane such that every edge is a horizontal or vertical segment, and no two edges cross. Testing upward planarity and rectilinear planarity are fundamental problems in the effective visualization of various graph and network structures. In this paper we show that upward planarity testing and rectilinear planarity testing are NP-complete problems. We also show that it is NP-hard to approximate the minimum number of bends in a planar orthogonal drawing of an n-vertex graph with an O(n 1\Gammaffl ) error, for any ffl ? 0.

In the mid 1980s, graphics workstations became the main platforms for software and information engineers. Since then, visualization of relational information has become an essential element of software systems. Graphs are commonly used to model relational information. They are depicted on a graphics workstation as graph drawings. The usefulness of the relational model depends on whether the graph drawings effectively convey the relational information to the users. This thesis is concerned with finding good drawings of graphs. As the amount of information that we want to visualize becomes larger and the relations become more complex, the classical graph model tends to be inadequate. Many extended models use a node hierarchy to help cope with the complexity. This thesis introduces a new graph model called the clustered graph. The central theme of the thesis is an investigation of efficient algorithms to produce good drawings for clustered graphs. Although the criteria for judging the qua...

INTRODUCTION Graph drawing addresses the problem of constructing geometric representations of graphs, and has important applications to key computer technologies such as software engineering, database systems, visual interfaces, and computer-aided-design. Research on graph drawing has been conducted within several diverse areas, including discrete mathematics (topological graph theory, geometric graph theory, order theory), algorithmics (graph algorithms, data structures, computational geometry, vlsi), and human-computer interaction (visual languages, graphical user interfaces, software visualization). This chapter overviews aspects of graph drawing that are especially relevant to computational geometry. Basic definitions on drawings and their properties are given in Section 1.1. Bounds on geometric and topological properties of drawings (e.g., area and crossings) are presented in Section 1.2. Section 1.3 deals with the time complexity of fundamental graph drawin

Abstract. Two trees with the same number of leaves have to be embedded in two layers in the plane such that the leaves are aligned in two adjacent layers. Additional matching edges between the leaves give a one-to-one correspondence between pairs of leaves of the different trees. Do there exist two planar embeddings of the two trees that minimize the crossings of the matching edges? This problem has important applications in the construction and evaluation of phylogenetic trees.

Abstract. We revisit monotone planar circuits MPCVP, with special attention to circuits with cylindrical embeddings. MPCVP is known to be in NC 3 in general, and in LogDCFL for the special case of upward stratified circuits. We characterize cylindricality, which is stronger than planarity but strictly generalizes upward planarity, and make the characterization partially constructive. We use this construction, and four key reduction lemmas, to obtain several improvements. We show that monotone circuits with embeddings that are stratified cylindrical, cylindrical, planar one-input-face and focused can be evaluated in LogDCFL, AC 1 (LogDCFL), LogCFL and AC 1 (LogDCFL) respectively. We note that the NC 3 algorithm for general MPCVP is in AC 1 (LogCFL) =SAC 2.Finally, we show that monotone circuits with toroidal embeddings can, given such an embedding, be evaluated in NC. 1

A tanglegram is a pair of trees whose leaf sets are in oneto-one correspondence; matching leaves are connected by inter-tree edges. In applications such as phylogenetics or hierarchical clustering, it is required that the individual trees are drawn crossing-free. A natural optimization problem, denoted tanglegram layout problem, is thus to minimize the number of crossings between inter-tree edges. The tanglegram layout problem is NP-hard even for complete binary trees, for general binary trees the problem is hard to approximate if the Unique Games Conjecture holds. In this paper we present an extensive experimental comparison of a new and several known heuristics for the general binary case. We measure the performance of the heuristics with a simple integer linear program and a new exact branch-and-bound algorithm. The new heuristic returns the first solution that the branch-and-bound algorithm computes (in quadratic time). Surprisingly, in most cases this simple heuristic is at least as good as the best of the other heuristics.

Abstract. A binary tanglegram is a pair 〈S, T 〉 of binary trees whose leaf sets are in one-to-one correspondence; matching leaves are connected by inter-tree edges. For applications, for example in phylogenetics, it is essential that both trees are drawn without edge crossings and that the inter-tree edges have as few crossings as possible. It is known that finding a drawing with the minimum number of crossings is NP-hard and that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to that number. We prove that under the Unique Games Conjecture there is no constantfactor approximation for general binary trees. We show that the problem is hard even if both trees are complete binary trees. For this case we give an O(n 3)-time 2-approximation and a new and simple fixed-parameter algorithm. We show that the maximization version of the dual problem for general binary trees can be reduced to a version of MaxCut for which the algorithm of Goemans and Williamson yields a 0.878-approximation. 1

Recently, we presented a new practical method for upward crossing minimization [8], which clearly outperformed existing approaches for drawing hierarchical graphs in that respect. The outcome of this method is an upward planar representation (UPR), a planarly embedded graph in which crossings are represented by dummy vertices. However, straight-forward approaches for drawing such UPRs lead to quite unsatisfactory results. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for drawing UPRs that greatly improves the layout quality, leading to good hierarchal drawings with few crossings. We analyze its performance on well-known benchmark graphs and compare it with alternative approaches.

author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii We can visualize a graph by producing a geometric representation of the graph in which each node is represented by a single point on the plane, and each edge is represented by a curve that connects its two endpoints. Directed graphs are often used to model hierarchical structures; in order to visualize the hierarchy represented by such a graph, it is desirable that a drawing of the graph reflects this hierarchy. This can be achieved by drawing all the edges in the graph such that they all point in an upwards direction. A graph that has a drawing in which all edges point in an upwards direction and in which no edges cross is known as an upward planar graph. Unfortunately, testing if a graph is upward planar is NP-complete. Parameterized complexity is a technique used to find efficient algorithms for hard