The metric dimension
(Tillquist et al. 2021) or
(Tomescu and Javid 2007, Ali et al. 2016) of a
graph
is the smallest number of nodes required to identify all other nodes based on shortest
path distances uniquely. More explicitly, following Foster-Greenwood and Uhl (2022),
let
be a finite connected graph with vertex
set
.
For vertices
,
the graph distance
is the length of the shortest path between
and
in
. Consider a subset of vertices
and refer to the vertices in
as "landmarks." Then
is called a resolving set if, for every pair of distinct vertices
, there exists a landmark
such that
. A resolving set of smallest possible size is
called a metric basis for
, and the metric dimension of
is the size of a metric basis.
Tillquist et al. (2021) summarize known results and give closed forms for a number of parametrized families of graphs.