Building a communication bridge with mobile hubs

Abstract

We study scenarios where mobile hubs are charged with building a communication bridge between two given points s and t. We introduce a new bi-criteria optimization problem where the objectives are minimizing the number of hubs on the bridge and either the maximum or the total distance traveled by the hubs. For a geometric version of the problem where the hubs must move onto the line segment [s,t], we present algorithms which achieve the minimum number of hubs while remaining within a constant factor of a given motion constraint. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.