Powers of graphs
Dorit S. Hochbaum, David B. Shmoys · 1984
In this paper we investigate a powerful, and yet simple, technique for devising approximation algorithms for a wide variety of NP-complete problems in routing, location, and communication network design. Each of the algorithms presented here delivers an approximate solution guaranteed to be within a constant factor of the optimal solution. In addition, for several of these problems we can show that unless P=NP, there does not exist a polynomial-time algorithm that has a better performance guarantee.