Building a Balanced k-d Tree in O(kn log n) Time

Abstract: The original description of the k-d tree recognized that rebalancing techniques, such as are used to build an AVL tree or a red-black tree, are not applicable to a k-d tree. Hence, in order to build a balanced k-d tree, it is necessary to find the median of the data for each recursive subdivision of those data. The sort or selection that is used to find the median for each subdivision strongly influences the computational complexity of building a k-d tree. This paper discusses an alternative algorithm that builds a balanced k-d tree by presorting the data in each of k dimensions prior to building the tree. It then preserves the order of these k sorts during tree construction and thereby avoids the requirement for any further sorting. Moreover, this algorithm is amenable to parallel execution via multiple threads. Compared to an algorithm that finds the median for each recursive subdivision, this presorting algorithm has equivalent performance for four dimensions and better performance for three or fewer dimensions.