Encoding and Decoding of Planar Maps through Conforming Delaunay Triangulations

This paper describes a method to represent a Planar Map (PM) through a Conforming Delaunay Triangulation (CDT) with applications in a server-client environment. At the server a CDT of the edges of the PM is determined. As the PM is now embedded by the CDT it is sufficient to send to the client the list of coordinates of the CDT nodes and an efficient encoded bitmap of the corresponding PM-CDT edges. The client determines a Delaunay Triangulation (DT) of the received list of coordinates of the CDT nodes. The DT at the client side is – in principle – equivalent to the CDT at the server side. The edges of the PM are found within this DT by the decoding of the bitmap of the corresponding PM-CDT edges.