On the construction of minimal broadcast networks

Broadcast is the task of transmitting a message originated at a node in a network to all the other nodes. In this paper, we consider the problem of constructing minimal broadcast networks, that is, communication networks such that broadcast can be performed, from any node, in minimum time. The algorithms we propose allow us to improve known bounds on the minimum number of communication lines needed in minimal broadcast networks. We give some numerical evidence that our algorithms also perform well in practice.