Fixed Partial Match Queries in Quadtrees

Abstract

Several recent papers in the literature have addressed the analysis of the cost P_{n,q} of partial match search for a given fixed query q - that has s out of K specified coordinates - in different multidimensional data structures. Indeed, detailed asymptotic estimates for the main term in the expected cost P_{n,q} = E {P_{n,q}} in standard and relaxed K-d trees are known (for any dimension K and any number s of specified coordinates), as well as stronger distributional results on P_{n,q} for standard 2-d trees and 2-dimensional quadtrees. In this work we derive a precise asymptotic estimate for the main order term of P_{n,q} in quadtrees, for any values of K and s, 0 infty exists, where alpha is the exponent of n in the expected cost of a random partial match query with s specified coordinates in a random K-dimensional quadtree.