Near-Optimal Distance Oracles for Vertex-Labeled Planar Graphs
Given an undirected n-vertex planar graph G=(V,E,ω) with non-negative edge weight function ω:E→ℝ and given an assigned label to each vertex, a vertex-labeled distance oracle is a data structure which for any query consisting of a vertex u and a label λ reports the shortest path distance from u to the nearest vertex with label λ. We show that if there is a distance oracle for undirected n-vertex planar graphs with non-negative edge weights using s(n) space and with query time q(n), then there is a vertex-labeled distance oracle with Õ(s(n)) space and Õ(q(n)) query time. Using the state-of-the-art distance oracle of Long and Pettie, our construction produces a vertex-labeled distance oracle using n^1+o(1) space and query time Õ(1) at one extreme, Õ(n) space and n^o(1) query time at the other extreme, as well as such oracles for the full tradeoff between space and query time obtained in their paper. This is the first non-trivial exact vertex-labeled distance oracle for planar graphs and, to our knowledge, for any interesting graph class other than trees.
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