AN ALGORITHMIC FRAMEWORK FOR SOLVING GEOMETRIC COVERING PROBLEMS — WITH APPLICATIONS

Abstract

In geometric covering problems, the aim is to cover a set of given points using a minimum number of shapes with prescribed properties. These problems extend in many ways such as covering in the presence of obstacles and partial covering. Since in most cases these problems are NP-hard, researchers have developed a large number of approximation algorithms to solve them. In this paper, with a more general view on these approaches, we propose an algorithmic framework that gives an approximation algorithm for the covering problem at hand, provided that its prerequisites are satisfied. As the result, we present a general class of geometric covering problems for which one can obtain polynomial-time approximation schemes (PTASs). This class of problems involves covering point sets with bounded shapes in a space with fixed dimension. For a problem to be in this class, it must be possible to find a polynomial number of maximal shapes and it must be possible to cover all the points in a small box with a small number of shapes. Using this framework, we present two new PTASs for the problems of covering with disks in the presence of polygonal obstacles and covering with sectors (pie-shaped wedges). The first problem has never been addressed before and for the second problem, only a logarithmic approximation algorithm was known in general and a 9-approximation algorithm for wide angles.