A note on the terminal Steiner tree problem

In 2002, Lin and Xue [Inform. Process. Lett. 84 (2002) 103-107] introduced a variant of the graph Steiner tree problem, in which each terminal vertex is required to be a leaf in the solution Steiner tree. They presented a ρ+2 approximation algorithm, where ρ is the approximation ratio of the best known efficient algorithm for the regular graph Steiner tree problem. In this note, we derive a simplified algorithm with an improved approximation ratio of 2ρ (currently ρ≈1.550, see [SODA 2000, 2000, pp. 770-790]).