The minimum-area spanning tree problem

  • Authors:
  • Paz Carmi;Matthew J. Katz;Joseph S. B. Mitchell

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel;Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel;Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY

  • Venue:
  • WADS'05 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Algorithms and Data Structures
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Motivated by optimization problems in sensor coverage, we formulate and study the Minimum-Area Spanning Tree (mast) problem: Given a set $\mathcal{P}$ of n points in the plane, find a spanning tree of $\mathcal{P}$ of minimum “area,” where the area of a spanning tree $\mathcal{T}$ is the area of the union of the n–1 disks whose diameters are the edges in $\mathcal{T}$. We prove that the Euclidean minimum spanning tree of $\mathcal{P}$ is a constant-factor approximation for mast. We then apply this result to obtain constant-factor approximations for the Minimum-Area Range Assignment (mara) problem, for the Minimum-Area Connected Disk Graph (macdg) problem, and for the Minimum-Area Tour (mat) problem. The first problem is a variant of the power assignment problem in radio networks, the second problem is a related natural problem, and the third problem is a variant of the traveling salesman problem.