APPROXIMATION ALGORITHMS FOR A VARIANT OF DISCRETE PIERCING SET PROBLEM FOR UNIT DISKS

Abstract

In this paper, we consider constant factor approximation algorithms for a variant of the discrete piercing set problem for unit disks. Here a set of points P is given; the objective is to choose minimum number of points in P to pierce the unit disks centered at all the points in P. We first propose a very simple algorithm that produces 12-approximation result in O(n log n) time. Next, we improve the approximation factor to 4 and then to 3. The worst case running time of these algorithms are O(n 8 log n) and O(n 15 log n) respectively. Apart from the space required for storing the input, the extra work-space requirement for each of these algorithms is O(1). Finally, we propose a PTAS for the same problem. Given a positive integer k, it can produce a solution with performance ratio [Formula: see text] in n O(k) time.