The p-neighbor k-center problem

The k-center problem with triangle inequality is that of placing k center nodes in a weighted undirected graph in which the edge weights obey the triangle inequality, so that the maximum distance of any node to its nearest center is minimized. In this paper, we consider a generalization of this problem where, given a number p, we wish to place k centers so as to minimize the maximum distance of any non-center node to its pth closest center. We derive a best possible approximation algorithm for this problem.