(Weakly) Self-approaching geometric graphs and spanners

Abstract

A geometric graph is called self-approaching, if for each (ordered) pair of vertices of the graph, there exists a self-approaching (directed) path between them. A path from a vertex u to a vertex v of the graph is called self-approaching, if for any point (not just vertex) x on the path, the distance between x and any point that starts at u and moves toward x is decreasing. A path is called an increasing-chord, if it is self-approaching from both sides, source to destination and destination to source. A geometric graph is called a self-approaching t-spanner, for t>1, if for each pair (u,v) of vertices of the graph, there exists a self-approaching path from u to v of length at most t times the Euclidean distance between u and v.In 2015, Dehkordi et al. (2015) [16] left the problem of the existence of an increasing-chord planar geometric graph for a set of points that lie along the sides of an acute triangle, as an open problem, but they did not mention anything about the case of an obtuse triangle. In this paper, we show that for each set of points on the boundary of an obtuse triangle, there exists an increasing-chord planar geometric graph. Moreover, we show that for each set of points on the boundary of an acute triangle, there exists an increasing-chord planar geometric graph using at most three Steiner points.We also introduce weakly self-approaching geometric graphs (spanners) as a variation of self-approaching geometric graphs (spanners). A weakly self-approaching path is defined similarly to a self-approaching path, except that when a point p on the path moves from the source to the destination, the Euclidean distance between p and the destination vertex (but not all the points on the path) decreases. A weakly self-approaching geometric graph (spanner) is defined by replacing “self-approaching” by “weakly self-approaching” in the above definition. In this paper, we show that for every point set S⊆Rd, there is a weakly self-approaching planar geometric graph spanning S. Furthermore, this study shows how to test in polynomial time, whether a given geometric graph is weakly self-approaching. Notably, the corresponding decision problem in the context of self-approaching geometric graphs in Rd with d≥3 is NP-hard.We also propose some algorithms for constructing a weakly self-approaching geometric t-spanner for a given point set and a real constant t>1. Also, we show that for every point set S on the boundary of any triangle, there exists an increasing-chord t-spanner spanning S and a weakly self-approaching t-spanner spanning S, both with O(kn) edges, in which k depends only on t.