Witness Set in Monotone Polygons: Exact and Approximate

TL;DR

This paper studies the problem of finding maximum witness sets in polygons, providing exact and approximate algorithms for monotone polygons and general polygons, respectively, with implications for visibility and computational geometry.

Contribution

It introduces a polynomial-time algorithm for Discrete Witness Set in general polygons and a PTAS for Witness Set in monotone polygons, advancing the understanding of visibility problems.

Findings

Polynomial-time algorithm for Discrete Witness Set in general polygons.

A PTAS for Witness Set in monotone polygons with near-linear time complexity.

Generation of witness sets of size $k$ in monotone polygons with $r^{O(k)} imes n$ points.

Abstract

Given a simple polygon $\mathscr{P}$, two points $x$ and $y$ within $\mathscr{P}$ are {\em visible} to each other if the line segment between $x$ and $y$ is contained in $\mathscr{P}$. The {\em visibility region} of a point $x$ includes all points in $\mathscr{P}$ that are visible from $x$. A point set $Q$ within a polygon $\mathscr{P}$ is said to be a \emph{witness set} for $\mathscr{P}$ if each point in $\mathscr{P}$ is visible from at most one point from $Q$. The problem of finding the largest size witness set in a given polygon was introduced by Amit et al. [Int. J. Comput. Geom. Appl. 2010]. Recently, Daescu et al. [Comput. Geom. 2019] gave a linear-time algorithm for this problem on monotone mountains. In this study, we contribute to this field by obtaining the largest witness set within both continuous and discrete models. In the {\sc Witness Set (WS)} problem, the input is a polygon $\mathscr{P}$, and the goal is to find a maximum-sized witness set in $\mathscr{P}$. In the {\sc Discrete Witness Set (DisWS)} problem, one is given a finite set of points $S$ alongside $\mathscr{P}$, and the task is to find a witness set $Q \subseteq S$ that maximizes $|Q|$. We investigate {\sc DisWS} in simple polygons, but consider {\sc WS} specifically for monotone polygons. Our main contribution is as follows: (1) a polynomial time algorithm for {\sc DisWS} for general polygons and (2) the discretization of the {\sc WS} problem for monotone polygons. Specifically, given a monotone polygon with $r$ reflex vertices, and a positive integer $k$ we generate a point set $Q$ with size $r^{O(k)} \cdot n$ such that $Q$ contains an witness set of size $k$ (if exists). This leads to an exact algorithm for {\sc WS} problem in monotone polygons running in time $r^{O(k)} \cdot n^{O(1)}$. We also provide a PTAS for this with running time $r^{O(1/\epsilon)} n^2$.