Two Complexity Results on Spanning-Tree Congestion Problems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the computational complexity of the spanning-tree congestion problem, proving NP-hardness for graphs with degree at least 3 and polynomial-time solvability for highly connected graphs.

Contribution

It resolves the complexity status of STC for all degree bounds  and shows polynomial solvability for K-edge-connected graphs.

Findings

STC is NP-hard for graphs with maximum degree .

The decision problem is polynomial-time solvable for K-edge-connected graphs.

The results complete the complexity landscape of the spanning-tree congestion problem.

Abstract

In the spanning-tree congestion problem ($\mathsf{STC}$), we are given a graph $G$, and the objective is to compute a spanning tree of $G$ that minimizes the maximum edge congestion. While $\mathsf{STC}$ is known to be $\mathbb{NP}$-hard, even for some restricted graph classes, several key questions regarding its computational complexity remain open, and we address some of these in our paper. (i) For graphs of degree at most $\Delta$, it is known that $\mathsf{STC}$ is $\mathbb{NP}$-hard when $\Delta\ge 8$. We provide a complete resolution of this variant, by showing that $\mathsf{STC}$ remains $\mathbb{NP}$-hard for each degree bound $\Delta\ge 3$. (ii) In the decision version of $\mathsf{STC}$, given an integer $K$, the goal is to determine whether the congestion of $G$ is at most $K$. We prove that this variant is polynomial-time solvable for $K$-edge-connected graphs.