The Gilbert arborescence problem

We investigate the problem of designing a minimum-cost flow network interconnecting n sources and a single sink, each with known locations in a normed space and with associated flow demands. The network may contain any finite number of additional unprescribed nodes from the space; these are known as the Steiner points. For concave increasing cost functions, a minimum-cost network of this sort has a tree topology, and hence can be called a Minimum Gilbert Arborescence (MGA). We characterize the local topological structure of Steiner points in MGAs, showing, in particular, that for a wide range of metrics, and for some typical real-world cost functions, the degree of each Steiner point is 3. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2013