On simultaneous straight-line grid embedding of a planar graph and its dual

Simultaneous representations of planar graphs and their duals normally require that the dual vertices to be placed inside their corresponding primal faces, and the edges of the dual graph to cross only their corresponding primal edges. Erten and Kobourov [C. Erten, S.G. Kobourov, Simultaneous embedding of a planar graph and its dual on the grid, Theory Computer Systems 38 (2005) 313–327] provided a linear time algorithm on simultaneous straight-line grid embedding of a 3-connected planar graph and its dual such that all the vertices are placed on grid points and each edge is drawn as one straight-line segment except for one which is drawn using two segments. Their drawing size is (2n−2)×(2n−2), where n is the total number of vertices in the graph and its dual. They raised an open question on whether there is a large class of planar graphs that allows this simultaneous straight-line grid embedding on a smaller grid. We answer this open question by giving a linear time simultaneous straight-line grid embedding algorithm for a 3-connected planar graph and its dual on a grid of size (n−1)×n.