Linear Expected Complexity for Directional and Multiplicative Voronoi Diagrams

Abstract: While the standard unweighted Voronoi diagram in the plane has linear worst-case complexity, many of its natural generalizations do not. This paper considers two such previously studied generalizations, namely multiplicative and semi Voronoi diagrams. These diagrams both have quadratic worst-case complexity, though here we show that their expected complexity is linear for certain natural randomized inputs. Specifically, we argue that the expected complexity is linear for: (1) semi Voronoi diagrams when the visible direction is randomly sampled, and (2) for multiplicative diagrams when either weights are sampled from a constant-sized set, or the more challenging case when weights are arbitrary but locations are sampled from a square.