Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1405.6564

A PTAS for the continuous 1.5D Terrain Guarding Problem

Stephan Friedrichs·Michael Hemmer·Christiane Schmidt
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

In the continuous 1.5-dimensional terrain guarding problem we are given an $x$-monotone chain (the \emph{terrain} $T$) and ask for the minimum number of point guards (located anywhere on $T$), such that all points of $T$ are covered by at least one guard. It has been shown that the 1.5-dimensional terrain guarding problem is \NP-hard. The currently best known approximation algorithm achieves a factor of $4$. For the discrete problem version with a finite set of guard candidates and a finite set of points on the terrain that need to be monitored, a polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) has been presented [10]. We show that for the general problem we can construct finite guard and witness sets, $G$ and $W$, such that there exists an optimal guard cover $G^* \subseteq G$ that covers $T$, and when these guards monitor all points in $W$ the entire terrain is guarded. This leads to a PTAS as well as an (exact) IP formulation for the continuous terrain guarding problem.

Explore related subjects

cs.CG

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Stephan Friedrichs, Michael Hemmer, Christiane Schmidt. 2014-07-28. A PTAS for the continuous 1.5D Terrain Guarding Problem. https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.6564

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Almost Linear Universal Point Sets for Planar Graphs

A point set is universal for planar graphs on $n$ vertices if every such graph has a straight-line drawing without crossings whose vertices belong to the set. We construct universal point sets of size $n^{1+o(1)}$, improving the previous quadratic upper bound. Our construction uses the reduction of Bannister, Cheng, Devanny, and Eppstein from universal point sets to superpatterns for $213$-avoiding permutations. We represent these permutations by ordered rooted forests and construct a small family of intervals containing every such forest. The result follows from a straightforward bound on the size of the family of intervals. GPT-6 Astra assisted in developing the construction and proof.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2026

Some results on Archdeacon's conjecture for rotation systems

A rotation system on $n$ elements assigns to each element a cyclic order of the other $n-1$ elements. A four-element subset is non-planar if its induced rotation system cannot be realized by a crossing-free drawing of $K_4$. As a combinatorial strengthening of Hill's conjecture on the crossing number of the complete graph, Archdeacon conjectured that every rotation system on $n$ elements has at least $H(n)=\frac{1}{4} \lfloor\frac {n}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-2}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-3}{2}\rfloor$ non-planar four-element subsets. We computationally verify Archdeacon's conjecture for $n\leq 10$ and show that every extremal rotation system in these orders is realizable by a simple drawing. With computer assistance, we prove that every rotation system on $n$ elements has at least $(8/9 - o(1)) H(n)$ non-planar four-element subsets. We also present a proof by hand for a weaker lower bound of $(2/3-o(1)) H(n)$. Finally, extending recent work of Felsner on antipodal pairs in drawings, we show that Archdeacon's conjecture holds for antipodally shellable rotation systems.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2026

The Hyperbolic Surface Distance, Diameter, and Dirichlet Problems

Despite the prominence of hyperbolic surfaces in mathematics, basic algorithmic questions about them, even computing the distance between two points, have remained open, leaving many features of these surfaces inaccessible. The classical machinery assumes a polyhedral structure absent on a smooth surface. We remove these obstacles. We begin with an efficient $O(g^2)$ algorithm for the distance between two points, where $g$ is the genus of the surface. Building on it, we obtain an $O(g^2 \log g)$ method for answering distance queries from a fixed source and, as a consequence, for recentering a Dirichlet domain around an arbitrary point. This understanding of distances on the surface then lets us approximate the diameter to within any $\eps$ in time $O(g^3 \log g / \eps^2)$. We further show that the diameter, a single real number encoding a great deal about the surface, is exactly computable. Its hyperbolic cosine is an algebraic number over the field encoding the coefficients of the hyperbolic isometries defining the surface.

cs.CG↗