Object Location Using Path Separators

Ittai Abraham Cyril Gavoille
	Abstract We study a novel separator property called k-path separable. Roughly speaking, a k-path separable graph can be recursively separated into smaller components by sequentially removing k shortest paths. Our main result is that every minor free weighted graph is k-path separable. We then show that k-path separable graphs can be used to solve several object location problems: (1) a small-worldization with an average poly-logarithmic number of hops; (2) an (1 + ε)-approximate distance labeling scheme with O(log n) space labels; (3) a stretch-(1 + ε) compact routing scheme with tables of poly-logarithmic space; (4) an (1 + ε)-approximate distance oracle with O(n log n) space and O(log n) query time. Our results generalizes to much wider classes of weighted graphs, namely to bounded-dimension isometric separable graphs.
	[PODC 06 version pdf]