There are Plane Spanners of Maximum Degree 4

TL;DR

This paper proves that for any set of points in the plane, there exists a plane spanner with maximum degree at most 4, improving previous bounds and providing an efficient construction method.

Contribution

It establishes the existence of a plane spanner with maximum degree 4 for Euclidean graphs and offers an efficient algorithm for its construction.

Findings

Existence of a plane spanner with degree at most 4

Construction algorithm based on Chew's L1-Delaunay triangulation

Progress towards closing the gap in maximum degree bounds

Abstract

Let E be the complete Euclidean graph on a set of points embedded in the plane. Given a constant t >= 1, a spanning subgraph G of E is said to be a t-spanner, or simply a spanner, if for any pair of vertices u,v in E the distance between u and v in G is at most t times their distance in E. A spanner is plane if its edges do not cross. This paper considers the question: "What is the smallest maximum degree that can always be achieved for a plane spanner of E?" Without the planarity constraint, it is known that the answer is 3 which is thus the best known lower bound on the degree of any plane spanner. With the planarity requirement, the best known upper bound on the maximum degree is 6, the last in a long sequence of results improving the upper bound. In this paper we show that the complete Euclidean graph always contains a plane spanner of maximum degree at most 4 and make a big step toward closing the question. Our construction leads to an efficient algorithm for obtaining the spanner from Chew's L1-Delaunay triangulation.