Finding Four Independent Trees

Abstract

Motivated by a multitree approach to the design of reliable communication protocols, Itai and Rodeh gave a linear time algorithm for finding two independent spanning trees in a 2-connected graph. Cheriyan and Maheshwari gave an $O(|V|^2)$ algorithm for finding three independent spanning trees in a 3-connected graph. In this paper we present an $O(|V|^3)$ algorithm for finding four independent spanning trees in a 4-connected graph. We make use of chain decompositions of 4-connected graphs.