Constructing edge-disjoint spanning trees in product networks

A Cartesian product network is obtained by applying the cross operation on two graphs. We study the problem of constructing the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees (abbreviated to EDSTs) in Cartesian product networks. Let G=(V/sub G/, E/sub G/) be a graph having n/sub 1/ EDSTs and F=(V/sub F/, E/sub F/) be a graph having n/sub 2/ EDSTs. Two methods are proposed for constructing EDSTs in the Cartesian product of G and F, denoted by G/spl times/F. The graph G has t/sub 1/=|E/sub G/|/spl middot/n/sub 1/(|V/sub G/|-1) more edges than that are necessary for constructing n/sub 1/ EDSTs in it, and the graph F has t2=|E/sub F/'-n/sub 2/(|V/sub F/|-1) more edges than that are necessary for constructing n/sub 2/ EDSTs in it. By assuming that t/sub 1//spl ges/n/sub 1/ and t/sub 2//spl ges/n/sub 2/, our first construction shows that n/sub 1/+n/sub 2/ EDSTS can be constructed in G/spl times/F. Our second construction does not need any assumption and it constructs n/sub 1/+n/sub 2/-1 EDSTs in G/spl times/F. By applying the proposed methods, it is easy to construct the maximum numbers of EDSTs in many important Cartesian product networks, such as hypercubes, tori, generalized hypercubes, mesh connected trees, and hyper Petersen networks.