In this paper, we study the problem of homomorphisms of a general clas
s of line digraphs. We show that the homomorphisms can always be defin
ed using a partial binary operation on the alphabet whose letters form
labels of the vertices. We apply these results to de Bruijn and Kautz
(in short B/K) digraphs to characterize their uniform homomorphisms.
For d non-prime, we describe algorithms for constructing non-trivial u
niform homomorphisms of d-ary B/K digraphs of diameter D onto d-ary B/
K digraphs of diameter D - 1. Using the properties of the uniform homo
morphisms and shortest-path spanning trees of B/K digraphs, we also de
scribe optimal emulations of Divide&Conquer computations on B/K digrap
hs. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.