A Simple Routing Method for Reverse k-Nearest Neighbor Queries in Spatial Networks

Due to the recent popularization of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial network environments that can display the changes of spatial axes in mobile phones have received much attention. In addition, many users use location-based services, which are one input devices of GIS. Many researchers have proposed methods of k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) search that have a bi-directional relationship from a query object to a target object. Several methods have also proposed reverse k-nearest neighbor (RkNN) searches. The RkNN method considers the inverse direction with the position between query and target objects. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a simple routing method for reverse k-nearest neighbor queries in spatial networks that uses the bichromatic reverse k-nearest neighbor search and considers the rectangular region including the exact point of each object. We show the region, where the relationship between the query and target objects is not changed, and identify the route to a destination for a moving object.