CONVEX DRAWINGS OF INTERNALLY TRICONNECTED PLANE GRAPHS ON O(n2) GRIDS

In a convex grid drawing of a plane graph, every edge is drawn as a straight-line segment without any edge-intersection, every vertex is located at a grid point, and every facial cycle is drawn as a convex polygon. A plane graph G has a convex drawing if and only if G is internally triconnected. It has been known that an internally triconnected plane graph G of n vertices has a convex grid drawing on a grid of O(n3) area if the triconnected component decomposition tree of G has at most four leaves. In this paper, we improve the area bound O(n3) to O(n2), which is optimal up to a constant factor. More precisely, we show that G has a convex grid drawing on a 2n × 4n grid. We also present an algorithm to find such a drawing in linear time.

CONVEX DRAWINGS OF PLANE GRAPHS OF MINIMUM OUTER APICES

In a convex drawing of a plane graph G, every facial cycle of G is drawn as a convex polygon. A polygon for the outer facial cycle is called an outer convex polygon. A necessary and sufficient condition for a plane graph G to have a convex drawing is known. However, it has not been known how many apices of an outer convex polygon are necessary for G to have a convex drawing. In this paper, we show that the minimum number of apices of an outer convex polygon necessary for G to have a convex drawing is, in effect, equal to the number of leaves in a triconnected component decomposition tree of a new graph constructed from G, and that a convex drawing of G having the minimum number of apices can be found in linear time.