Algebraic solution to a constrained rectilinear minimax location problem on the plane

Abstract

We consider a constrained minimax single facility location problem on the plane with rectilinear distance. The feasible set of location points is restricted to rectangles with sides oriented at a 45 degrees angle to the axes of Cartesian coordinates. To solve the problem, an algebraic approach based on an extremal property of eigenvalues of irreducible matrices in idempotent algebra is applied. A new algebraic solution is given that reduces the problem to finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors of appropriately defined matrices.