Algorithms for Euclidean Degree Bounded Spanning Tree Problems

Abstract

Given a set of points in the Euclidean plane, the Euclidean [Formula: see text]-minimum spanning tree ([Formula: see text]-MST) problem is the problem of finding a spanning tree with maximum degree no more than [Formula: see text] for the set of points such the sum of the total length of its edges is minimum. Similarly, the Euclidean [Formula: see text]-minimum bottleneck spanning tree ([Formula: see text]-MBST) problem, is the problem of finding a degree-bounded spanning tree for a set of points in the plane such that the length of the longest edge is minimum. When [Formula: see text], these two problems may yield disjoint sets of optimal solutions for the same set of points. In this paper, we perform computational experiments to compare the accuracies of a variety of heuristic and approximation algorithms for both these problems. We develop heuristics for these problems and compare them with existing algorithms. We also describe a new type of edge swap algorithm for these problems that outperforms all the algorithms we tested.