Approximating Euclidean distances by small degree graphs

Given an undirected edge-weighted graphG=(V,E), a subgraphG′=(V,E′) is at-spanner ofG if, for everyu, v∈V, the weighted distance betweenu andv inG′ is at mostt times the weighted distance betweenu andv inG.We consider the problem of approximating the distances among points of a Euclidean metric space: given a finite setV of points in ℝd, we want to construct a sparset-spanner of the complete weighted graph induced byV. The weight of an edge in these graphs is the Euclidean distance between the endpoints of the edge.We show by a simple greedy argument that, for anyt>1 and anyV ⊂ ℝd, at-spannerG ofV exists such thatG has degree bounded by a function ofd andt. The analysis of our bounded degree spanners improves over previously known upper bounds on the minimum number of edges of Euclideant-spanners, even compared with spanners of boundedaverage degree. Our results answer two open problems, one proposed by Vaidya and the other by Keil and Gutwin.The main result of the paper concerns the case of dimensiond=2. It is fairly easy to see that, for somet (t≥7.6),t-spanners of maximum degree 6 exist for any set of points in the Euclidean plane, but it was not known that degree 5 would suffice. We prove that for some (fixed)t, t-spanners of degree 5 exist for any set of points in the plane. We do not know if 5 is the best possible upper bound on the degree.