On the Construction of Optimal Obstacle-Avoiding Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Trees

This paper presents an efficient method to solve the obstacle-avoiding rectilinear Steiner tree (OARSMT) problem optimally. Our work is developed based on the GeoSteiner approach in which full Steiner trees (FSTs) are first constructed and then combined into a rectilinear Steiner minimum tree (RSMT). We modify and extend the algorithm to allow obstacles in the routing region. For each routing obstacle, we first introduce four virtual terminals located at its four corners. We then give the definition of FSTs with blockages and prove that they will follow some very simple structures. Based on these observations, a two-phase approach is developed for the construction of OARSMTs. In the first phase, we generate a set of FSTs with blockages. In the second phase, the FSTs generated in the first phase are used to construct an OARSMT. Finally, experiments on several benchmarks are conducted. Results show that the proposed method is able to handle problems with hundreds of terminals in the presence of multiple obstacles, generating an optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time.