World Wide Networks (WWN) is a leading company that operates large telecommunication networks. WWN would like to setup a new network in Borduria, a nice country that recently managed to get rid of its military dictator Kurvi-Tasch and which is now seeking for investments of international companies (for a complete description of Borduria, have a look to the following Tintin albums ``King Ottokar's Sceptre", ``The Calculus Affair" and ``Tintin and the Picaros"). You are requested to help WWN todecide how to setup its network for a minimal total cost.
Problem
There are several local companies running small networks (called subnetworks in the following) that partially cover the n largest cities of Borduria. WWN would like to setup a network that connects all n cities. To achieve this, it can either build edges between cities from scratch or it can buy one or several subnetworks from local companies. You are requested to help WWN to decide how to setup its network for a minimal total cost.
- All n cities are located by their two-dimensional Cartesian coordinates.
- There are q existing subnetworks. If q>=1 then each subnetwork c ( 1<=c<=q ) is defined by a set of interconnected cities (the exact shape of a subnetwork is not relevant to our problem).
- A subnetwork c can be bought for a total cost wc and it cannot be split (i.e., the network cannot be fractioned).
- To connect two cities that are not connected through the subnetworks bought, WWN has to build an edge whose cost is exactly the square of the Euclidean distance between the cities.
You have to decide which existing networks you buy and which edges you setup so that the total cost is minimal. Note that the number of existing networks is always very small (typically smaller than 8).
A 115 Cities Instance
Consider a 115 cities instance of the problem with 4 subnetworks (the 4 first graphs in Figure 1). As mentioned earlier the exact shape of a subnetwork is not relevant still, to keep figures easy to read, we have assumed an arbitrary tree like structure for each subnetworks. The bottom network in Figure 1 corresponds to the solution in which the first and the third networks have been bought. Thin edges correspond to edges build from scratch while thick edges are those from one of the initial networks.