Dynamic programming approach to the generalized minimum manhattan network problem

We study the generalized minimum Manhattan network (GMMN) problem: given a set $$P$$ of pairs of points in the Euclidean plane $$\mathbb R^2$$, we are required to find a minimum-length geometric network which consists of axis-aligned segments and contains a shortest path in the $$L:1$$ metric (a so-called Manhattan path) for each pair in $$P$$. This problem commonly generalizes several NP-hard network design problems that admit constant-factor approximation algorithms, such as the rectilinear Steiner arborescence (RSA) problem, and it is open whether so does the GMMN problem. As a bottom-up exploration, Schnizler (2015) focused on the intersection graphs of the rectangles defined by the pairs in $$P$$, and gave a polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm for the GMMN problem whose input is restricted so that both the treewidth and the maximum degree of its intersection graph are bounded by constants. In this paper, as the first attempt to remove the degree bound, we provide a polynomial-time algorithm for the star case, and extend it to the general tree case based on an improved dynamic programming approach.