On the metric basis in wheels with consecutive missing spokes

• Published in: AIMS mathematics Vol. 5; no. 6; pp. 6221 - 6232
• Main Authors: Ahtsham Ul Haq Bokhary, Syed, Zill-e-Shams, Ghaffar, Abdul, Sooppy Nisar, Kottakkaran
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIMS Press 01.01.2020
• Subjects: basis; exchange property; metric dimension; missing spokes; resolving set; wheel
• ISSN: 2473-6988; 2473-6988
• DOI: 10.3934/math.2020400

If $G$ is a connected graph, the $distance$ $d(u, v)$ between two vertices $u, v \in V(G)$ is the length of a shortest path between them. Let $W = \{w_1,w_2, \dots ,w_k\}$ be an ordered set of vertices of $G$ and let $v$ be a vertex of $G$. The $representation$ $r(v|W)$ of $v$ with respect to $W$ is the k-tuple $(d(v,w_1), d(v,w_2), \dots , d(v,w_k))$. $W$ is called a $resolving set$ or a $locating set$ if every vertex of $G$ is uniquely identified by its distances from the vertices of $W$, or equivalently if distinct vertices of $G$ have distinct representations with respect to $W$. A resolving set of minimum cardinality is called a $metric basis$ for $G$ and this cardinality is the $metric dimension$ of $G$, denoted by $\beta(G)$. The metric dimension of some wheel related graphs is studied recently by Siddiqui and Imran. In this paper, we study the metric dimension of wheels with $k$ consecutive missing spokes denoted by $W(n,k)$. We compute the exact value of the metric dimension of $W(n,k)$ which shows that wheels with consecutive missing spokes have unbounded metric dimensions. It is natural to ask for the characterization of graphs with an unbounded metric dimension. The exchange property for resolving a set of $W(n,k)$ has also been studied in this paper and it is shown that exchange property of the bases in a vector space does not hold for minimal resolving sets of wheels with $k$-consecutive missing spokes denoted by $W(n,k)$.