Growing a tree from its branches

Prosfenjit Bose, Godfried Toussaint

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Given a set L of n disjoint line segments in the plane, we show that it is always possible to form a spanning tree of the endpoints of the segments, such that each line segment is an edge of the tree and the tree has no crossing edges. Such a tree is known as an encompassing tree and can be constructed in O(n log n) time when no three endpoints in L are collinear. In the presence of collinear endpoints, we show first that an encompassing tree with no crossing edges exists and can be computed in O(n2) time, and second that the maximum degree of a node in the minimum weight spanning tree formed by these line segments is seven, and that there exists a set of line segments achieving this bound. Finally, we show that the complexity of finding the minimum weight spanning tree is optimal Θ(n log n) when we assume that the endpoints of the line segments are in general position.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)86-103
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Algorithms
Volume19
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1995

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Optimization
  • Computational Mathematics
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics

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