Approximating node-weighted multicast trees in wireless ad-hoc networks

Multicast communication in a wireless ad-hoc network can be established using a tree that spans the multicast sender and receivers as well as other intermediate nodes. If the network is modelled as a graph, the multicast tree is a Steiner tree, the multicast sender and receivers correspond to terminals, and other nodes participating in the tree are Steiner nodes. As Steiner nodes are nodes that participate in the multicast tree by forwarding packets but do not benefit from the multicast, it is a natural objective to compute a tree that minimizes the total cost of the Steiner nodes. We therefore consider the problem of computing, for a given node-weighted graph and a set of terminals, a Steiner tree with Steiner nodes of minimum total weight. For graph classes that admit spanning trees of maximum degree at most d, we obtain a 0.775d-approximation algorithm. We show that this result implies a 3.875-approximation algorithm for unit disk graphs, an O(1/α2)-approximation algorithm for α-unit disk graphs, and an O(λ)-approximation algorithm for (λ + 1)-claw-free graphs.

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