Minimum-weight triangulation is NP-hard

  • Authors:
  • Wolfgang Mulzer;Günter Rote

  • Affiliations:
  • Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey;Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the ACM (JACM)
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

A triangulation of a planar point set S is a maximal plane straight-line graph with vertex set S. In the minimum-weight triangulation (MWT) problem, we are looking for a triangulation of a given point set that minimizes the sum of the edge lengths. We prove that the decision version of this problem is NP-hard, using a reduction from PLANAR 1-IN-3-SAT. The correct working of the gadgets is established with computer assistance, using dynamic programming on polygonal faces, as well as the β-skeleton heuristic to certify that certain edges belong to the minimum-weight triangulation.