Given a finite set P ⊂ ℝ², the directed Theta-6 graph, denoted Θ₆(P), is a well-studied geometric graph due to its close relationship with the Delaunay triangulation. The Θ₆(P)-graph is defined as follows: the plane around each point u ∈ P is partitioned into 6 equiangular cones with apex u, and in each cone, u is joined to the point whose projection on the bisector of the cone is closest. Equivalently, the Θ₆(P)-graph contains an edge from u to v exactly when the interior of ∇_u^v is disjoint from P, where ∇_u^v is the unique equilateral triangle containing u on a corner, v on the opposite side, and whose sides are parallel to the cone boundaries. It was previously shown that the spanning ratio of the Θ₆(P)-graph is between 4 and 7 in the worst case (Akitaya, Biniaz, and Bose Comput. Geom., 105-106:101881, 2022). We close this gap by showing a tight spanning ratio of 5. This is the first tight bound proven for the spanning ratio of any Θ_k(P)-graph. Our lower bound models a long path by mapping it to a converging series. Our upper bound proof uses techniques novel to the area of spanners. We use linear programming to prove that among several candidate paths, there exists a path satisfying our bound.

We present a routing algorithm for the Θ4-graph that computes a path between any two vertices s and t having length at most 17 times the Euclidean distance between s and t. To compute this path, at each step, the algorithm only uses knowledge of the location of the current vertex, its (at most four) outgoing edges, the destination vertex, and one additional bit of information in order to determine the next edge to follow. This provides the first known online, local, competitive routing algorithm with constant routing ratio for the Θ4-graph, as well as improving the best known upper bound on the spanning ratio of these graphs from 237 to 17. We also show that without this additional bit of information, the routing ratio increases to ≈ 17.03.

A geometric graph G=(P,E) is a set of points in the plane and edges between pairs of points, where the weight of an edge is equal to the Euclidean distance between its two endpoints. In local routing we find a path through G from a source vertex s to a destination vertex t, using only knowledge of the current vertex, its incident edges, and the locations of s and t. We present an algorithm for local routing on the Delaunay triangulation, and show that it finds a path between a source vertex s and a target vertex t that is not longer than 3.56|st|, improving the previous bound of 5.9|st|.