Predecessor search with distance-sensitive query time

Abstract: A predecessor (successor) search finds the largest element $x^-$ smaller than the input string $x$ (the smallest element $x^+$ larger than or equal to $x$, respectively) out of a given set $S$; in this paper, we consider the static case (i.e., $S$ is fixed and does not change over time) and assume that the $n$ elements of $S$ are available for inspection. We present a number of algorithms that, with a small additional index (usually of O(n log w) bits, where $w$ is the string length), can answer predecessor/successor queries quickly and with time bounds that depend on different kinds of distance, improving significantly several results that appeared in the recent literature. Intuitively, our first result has a running time that depends on the distance between $x$ and $x^\pm$: it is especially efficient when the input $x$ is either very close to or very far from $x^-$ or $x^+$; our second result depends on some global notion of distance in the set $S$, and is fast when the elements of $S$ are more or less equally spaced in the universe; finally, for our third result we rely on a finger (i.e., an element of $S$) to improve upon the first one; its running time depends on the distance between the input and the finger.