Processing mutual nearest neighbor queries for moving object trajectories

Given a set of trajectories D, a query object (point or trajectory) q, and a query interval T, a mutual (i.e., symmetric) nearest neighbor (MNN) query over trajectories finds from D within T, the set of trajectories that are among the k₁ nearest neighbors (NNs) of q, and meanwhile, have q as one of their k₂ NNs. This type of queries considers proximity of q to the trajectories and the proximity of the trajectories to q, which is useful in many applications (e.g., decision making, data mining, pattern recognition, etc.). In this paper, we first formalize MNN query and identify some problem characteristics, and then develop two algorithms to process MNN queries efficiently. In particular, we thoroughly investigate two classes of queries, viz. MNN_P and MNN_T queries, which are defined w.r.t. stationary query points and moving query trajectories, respectively. Our techniques utilize the advantages of batch processing and reusing technology to reduce the I/O (i.e., number of node/page accesses) and CPU costs significantly. Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of our proposed algorithms using both real and synthetic datasets.