Range nearest-neighbor query

A range nearest-neighbor (RNN) query retrieves the nearest neighbor (NN) for every point in a range. It is a natural generalization of point and continuous nearest-neighbor queries and has many applications. In this paper, we consider the ranges as (hyper)rectangles and propose efficient in-memory processing and secondary memory pruning techniques for RNN queries in both 2D and high-dimensional spaces. These techniques are generalized for kRNN queries, which return the k nearest neighbors for every point in the range. In addition, we devise an auxiliary solution-based index EXO-tree to speed up any type of NN query. EXO-tree is orthogonal to any existing NN processing algorithm and, thus, can be transparently integrated. An extensive empirical study was conducted to evaluate the CPU and I/O performance of these techniques, and the study showed that they are efficient and robust under various data sets, query ranges, numbers of nearest neighbors, dimensions, and cache sizes.