Crossing Minimization in Perturbed Drawings

Abstract

Due to data compression or low resolution, nearby vertices and edges of a graph drawing may be bundled to a common node or arc. We model such a `compromised' drawing by a piecewise linear map $\varphi:G\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2$. We wish to perturb $\varphi$ by an arbitrarily small $\varepsilon>0$ into a proper drawing (in which the vertices are distinct points, any two edges intersect in finitely many points, and no three edges have a common interior point) that minimizes the number of crossings. An $\varepsilon$-perturbation, for every $\varepsilon>0$, is given by a piecewise linear map $\psi_\varepsilon:G\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2$ with $\|\varphi-\psi_\varepsilon\|<\varepsilon$, where $\|.\|$ is the uniform norm (i.e., $\sup$ norm). We present a polynomial-time solution for this optimization problem when $G$ is a cycle and the map $\varphi$ has no \emphh{spurs} (i.e., no two adjacent edges are mapped to overlapping arcs). We also show that the problem becomes NP-complete (i) when $G$ is an arbitrary graph and $\varphi$ has no spurs, and (ii) when $\varphi$ may have spurs and $G$ is a cycle or a union of disjoint paths.