Skip to main content

Close approximations of minimum rectangular coverings

Extended abstract

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 1996)

Abstract

We consider the problem of covering arbitrary polygons with rectangles. The rectangles must lie entirely within the polygon. (This requires that the interior angles of the polygon are all greater than or equal to 90 degrees.) We want to cover the polygon with as few rectangles as possible. This problem has an application in fabricating masks for integrated circuits.

In this paper we will describe the first polynomial algorithm, guaranteeing an O(log n) approximation factor, provided that the n vertices of the input polygon are given as polynomially bounded integer coordinates. By the same technique we also obtain the first algorithm producing a covering which is within a constant factor of the optimal in exponential time (compared to the doubly-exponential known before).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. P. Berman and B. DasGupta, Approximating the Rectilinear Polygon Cover Problems, Proc. 4th Canadian Conf. Computational Geometry, pp.229–235, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  2. B.M. Chazelle, Computational Geometry and Convexity, Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie-Mellon Univ., Dept. Comput. Sci., 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Carmen, T.H., Leiserson, C.E. and Rivest, R.L., Introduction to Algorithms, MIT Press, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  4. J.C. Culberson and R.A. Reckhow, Covering Polygon is Hard, Journal of Algorithms, 17:2–44, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  5. D. Franzblau and D. Kleitman, An Algorithm for Constructing Regions with Rectangles, In Proc. 16th Ann. ACM Symp. Theory of Comp., pp. 167–174, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

  6. C. Levcopoulos and J. Gudmundsson, Close Approximation of Minimum Rectangular Coverings, LU-CS-TR 96-164, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Lund University, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  7. A. Hegedüs, Algorithms for covering polygons by rectangles, Computer Aided Design, vol. 14, no 5, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  8. J.M. Keil, Minimally Covering a Horizontally Convex Orthogonal Polygon, Proceedings 2nd Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, pp.43–51, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

  9. C. Levcopoulos, A Fast Heuristic for Covering Polygons by Rectangles, Proceedings FCT'85, Cottbus, GDR, 1985 (LNCS 199, Springer-Verlag).

    Google Scholar 

  10. C. Levcopoulos, Improved Bounds for Covering General Polygons with Rectangles, Proc. 7th Conf. on FST&TCS, Pune, India, 1987 (LNCS 287, Springer-Verlag).

    Google Scholar 

  11. L. Monk, Elementary-recursive Decision Procedures, PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. O'Rourke, The decidability of Covering by Convex Polygons, Report JHU-EE 82-1, Dept. Elect. Engrg. Comp. Sci., Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD,1982.

    Google Scholar 

  13. J. O'Rourke and K.J. Supowit, Some NP-hard Polygon Decomposition Problems, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. IT-29, pp.181–190, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  14. F.P. Preparata and M.I. Shamos, Computational Geometry, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  15. M. Yamashita, T. Ibaraki and N. Honda, The minimum number cover problem of a rectilinear region by rectangles, EATCS'84.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

V. Chandru V. Vinay

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Levcopoulos, C., Gudmundsson, J. (1996). Close approximations of minimum rectangular coverings. In: Chandru, V., Vinay, V. (eds) Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. FSTTCS 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1180. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-62034-6_44

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-62034-6_44

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-62034-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49631-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics