Abstract
Given an undirected distance graph G=(V, E, d) and a set S, where V is the set of vertices in G, E is the set of edges in G, d is a distance function which maps E into the set of nonnegative numbers and S{square image of or equal to}V is a subset of the vertices of V, the Steiner tree problem is to find a tree of G that spans S with minimal total distance on its edges. In this paper, we analyze a heuristic algorithm for the Steiner tree problem. The heuristic algorithm has a worst case time complexity of O(|S||V|2) on a random access computer and it guarantees to output a tree that spans S with total distance on its edges no more than 2(1-1/l) times that of the optimal tree, where l is the number of leaves in the optimal tree. © 1981 Springer-Verlag.