An Algorithm for Finding Minimum Degree Spanning Tree of Series-Parallel Graphs

A minimum degree spanning tree of a graph G is a spanning tree of G whose maximum degree is minimum among all spanning trees of G. The minimum degree spanning tree problem (MDST) is to construct such a spanning tree of a graph. In this paper, we propose a polynomial-time algorithm for solving the MDST problem on series-parallel graphs. Our algorithm runs in linear time for series-parallel graphs with small degrees. By applying this algorithm, we also give an approximation algorithm for solving the minimum edge-ranking spanning tree problem on series-parallel graphs.