Computing the L1 Geodesic Diameter and Center of a Polygonal Domain

Abstract

For a polygonal domain with h holes and a total of n vertices, we present algorithms that compute the L_1 geodesic diameter in O(n^2+h^4) time and the L_1 geodesic center in O((n^4+n^2 h^4)*alpha(n)) time, where alpha(.) denotes the inverse Ackermann function. No algorithms were known for these problems before. For the Euclidean counterpart, the best algorithms compute the geodesic diameter in O(n^{7.73}) or O(n^7(h+log(n))) time, and compute the geodesic center in O(n^{12+epsilon}) time. Therefore, our algorithms are much faster than the algorithms for the Euclidean problems. Our algorithms are based on several interesting observations on L_1 shortest paths in polygonal domains