Efficient Algorithms for Approximating Polygonal Chains

We consider the problem of approximating a polygonal chain C by another polygonal chain C' whose vertices are constrained to be a subset of the set of vertices of C . The goal is to minimize the number of vertices needed in the approximation C' . Based on a framework introduced by Imai and Iri [25], we define an error criterion for measuring the quality of an approximation. We consider two problems. (1) Given a polygonal chain C and a parameter ɛ \geq 0 , compute an approximation of C , among all approximations whose error is at most ɛ , that has the smallest number of vertices. We present an O(n ^{4/3 + δ} ) -time algorithm to solve this problem, for any δ > 0; the constant of proportionality in the running time depends on δ . (2) Given a polygonal chain C and an integer k , compute an approximation of C with at most k vertices whose error is the smallest among all approximations with at most k vertices. We present a simple randomized algorithm, with expected running time O(n ^{4/3 + δ} ) , to solve this problem. Received September 17, 1998, and in revised form July 8, 1999.     

Approximation of an open polygonal curve with a minimum number of circular arcs and biarcs

We present an algorithm for approximating a given open polygonal curve with a minimum number of circular arcs. In computer-aided manufacturing environments, the paths of cutting tools are usually described with circular arcs and straight line segments. Greedy algorithms for approximating a polygonal curve with curves of higher order can be found in the literature. Without theoretical bounds it is difficult to say anything about the quality of these algorithms. We present an algorithm which finds a series of circular arcs that approximate the polygonal curve while remaining within a given tolerance region. This series contains the minimum number of arcs of any such series. Our algorithm takes O(n²logn) time for an original polygonal chain with n vertices. Using a similar approach, we design an algorithm with a runtime of O(n²logn), for computing a tangent-continuous approximation with the minimum number of biarcs, for a sequence of points with given tangent directions.     

Location of an undesirable facility in a polygonal region with forbidden zones

In this paper, we develop the problem of locating an undesirable facility in a bounded polygonal region (with forbidden polygonal zones), using Euclidean distances, under an objective function that generalizes the maximin and maxisum criteria, and includes other criteria such as the linear combinations of these criterions. We identify a finite dominating set (finite set of points to which an optimal solution must belong) for this problem and show that an optimum solution can be found in polynomial time in the number of vertices of the polygons in the model and the number of existing facilities.     

DNA recombination through assembly graphs

Motivated by DNA rearrangements and DNA homologous recombination modeled in [A. Angeleska, N. Jonoska, M. Saito, L.F. Landweber, RNA-guided DNA assembly, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 248(4) (2007), 706–720], we investigate smoothings on graphs that consist of only 4-valent and 1-valent rigid vertices, called assembly graphs. An assembly graph can be seen as a representation of the DNA during certain recombination processes in which 4-valent vertices correspond to the alignment of the recombination sites. A single gene is modeled by a polygonal path in an assembly graph. A polygonal path makes a “right-angle” turn at every vertex, defining smoothings at the 4-valent vertices and therefore modeling the recombination process. We investigate the minimal number of polygonal paths visiting all vertices of a given graph exactly once, and show that for every positive integer n there are graphs that require at least n such polygonal paths. We show that there is an embedding in three-dimensional space of each assembly graph such that smoothing of vertices according to a given set of polygonal paths results in an unlinked graph. As some recombination processes may happen simultaneously, we characterize the subsets of vertices whose simultaneous smoothings keep a given gene in tact and give a characterization of all sequences of sets of vertices defining successive simultaneous smoothings that can realize complete gene rearrangement.     

Visibility preserving terrain simplification— an experimental study

The terrain surface simplification problem has been studied extensively, as it has important applications in geographic information systems and computer graphics. The goal is to obtain a new surface that is combinatorially as simple as possible, while maintaining a prescribed degree of similarity with the original input surface. Generally, the approximation error is measured with respect to distance (e.g., Hausdorff) from the original or with respect to visual similarity. In this paper, we propose a new method of simplifying terrain surfaces, designed specifically to maximize a new measure of quality based on preserving inter-point visibility relationships. Our work is motivated by various problems of terrain analysis that rely on inter-point visibility relationships, such as optimal antenna placement.

We have implemented our new method and give experimental evidence of its effectiveness in simplifying terrains according to our quality measure. We experimentally compare its performance with that of other leading simplification methods.     

A new multipoint flux approximation method with a quasi-local stencil (MPFA-QL) for the simulation of diffusion problems in anisotropic and heterogeneous media

In this paper, we present a new linear cell-centered finite volume multipoint flux approximation (MPFA-QL) scheme for discretizing diffusion problems on general polygonal meshes. This scheme uses a quasi-local stencil, based upon the conormal decomposition, to approximate the control face flux when solving the steady state diffusion problem, being able to reproduce piecewise linear solutions exactly and it is very robust when dealing with heterogeneous and highly anisotropic media and severely distorted meshes. In our linear scheme, we first construct the one-sided fluxes on each control surface independently and then a unique flux expression is obtained by a convex combination of the one-sided fluxes. The unknown values at the vertices that define a control surface are interpolated by means of a linearity-preserving interpolation procedure, considering control volumes surrounding these vertices. To show the potential of the MPFA-QL scheme, we solve some benchmark using triangular and quadrilateral meshes and we compare our scheme with other numerical formulations found in literature.     

A Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme for Optimal Product-Requirement Communication Spanning Trees

Given an undirected graph with nonnegative edge lengths and nonnegative vertex weights, the routing requirement of a pair of vertices is assumed to be the product of their weights. The routing cost for a pair of vertices on a given spanning tree is defined as the length of the path between them multiplied by their routing requirement. The optimal product-requirement communication spanning tree is the spanning tree with minimum total routing cost summed over all pairs of vertices. This problem arises in network design and computational biology. For the special case that all vertex weights are identical, it has been shown that the problem is NP-hard and that there is a polynomial time approximation scheme for it. In this paper we show that the generalized problem also admits a polynomial time approximation scheme.     

Polygonal chains cannot lock in 4D

We prove that, in all dimensions d4, every simple open polygonal chain and every tree may be straightened, and every simple closed polygonal chain may be convexified. These reconfigurations can be achieved by algorithms that use polynomial time in the number of vertices, and result in a polynomial number of “moves”. These results contrast to those known for d=2, where trees can “lock”, and for d=3, where open and closed chains can lock.     

Fitting rectilinear polygonal curves to a set of points in the plane

In this paper two problems of fitting rectilinear polygonal curves to a set of points in the plane according to the minimax approximation are considered. The constraints are, respectively, on the number of vertices and length of the polygonal curve. In both cases efficient algorithms are developed.     

On Minimum Edge Ranking Spanning Trees

In this paper, we introduce the problem of computing a minimum edge ranking spanning tree (MERST); i.e., find a spanning tree of a given graph G whose edge ranking is minimum. Although the minimum edge ranking of a given tree can be computed in polynomial time, we show that problem MERST is NP-hard. Furthermore, we present an approximation algorithm for MERST, which realizes its worst case performance ratio where n is the number of vertices in G and Δ* is the maximum degree of a spanning tree whose maximum degree is minimum. Although the approximation algorithm is a combination of two existing algorithms for the restricted spanning tree problem and for the minimum edge ranking problem of trees, the analysis is based on novel properties of the edge ranking of trees.     

A generalization of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm with applications to VLSI routing

We generalize Dijkstra's algorithm for finding shortest paths in digraphs with non-negative integral edge lengths. Instead of labeling individual vertices we label subgraphs which partition the given graph. We can achieve much better running times if the number of involved subgraphs is small compared to the order of the original graph and the shortest path problems restricted to these subgraphs is computationally easy.As an application we consider the VLSI routing problem, where we need to find millions of shortest paths in partial grid graphs with billions of vertices. Here, our algorithm can be applied twice, once in a coarse abstraction (where the labeled subgraphs are rectangles), and once in a detailed model (where the labeled subgraphs are intervals). Using the result of the first algorithm to speed up the second one via goal-oriented techniques leads to considerably reduced running time. We illustrate this with a state-of-the-art routing tool on leading-edge industrial chips.     

Detection of discontinuities in scattered data approximation

A Detection Algorithm for the localisation of unknown fault lines of a surface from scattered data is given. The method is based on a local approximation scheme using thin plate splines, and we show that this yields approximation of second order accuracy instead of first order as in the global case. Furthermore, the Detection Algorithm works with triangulation methods, and we show their utility for the approximation of the fault lines. The output of our method provides polygonal curves which can be used for the purpose of constrained surface approximation. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Inapproximability of finding maximum hidden sets on polygons and terrains

How many people can hide in a given terrain, without any two of them seeing each other? We are interested in finding the precise number and an optimal placement of people to be hidden, given a terrain with n vertices. In this paper, we show that this is not at all easy: The problem of placing a maximum number of hiding people is almost as hard to approximate as the problem, i.e., it cannot be approximated by any polynomial-time algorithm with an approximation ratio of n for some >0, unless P=NP. This is already true for a simple polygon with holes (instead of a terrain). If we do not allow holes in the polygon, we show that there is a constant >0 such that the problem cannot be approximated with an approximation ratio of 1+.     

Relay placement for fault tolerance in wireless networks in higher dimensions

In this paper we consider the problem of adding the smallest number of additional (relay) nodes to a network of static nodes with limited communication range so that the induced communication graph is 2-connected (we consider both edge and vertex connectivity). The problem is NP-hard. We develop algorithms that find close to optimal solutions for both edge and vertex connectivity. We prove the algorithms have an approximation ratio of 2M for nodes distributed in a d-dimensional Euclidean space, where M is the maximum node degree of a Minimum Spanning Tree in d dimensions using Euclidean metrics. In addition, our methods extend with the same approximation guarantees to a generalization when the locations of relays are required to avoid certain polygonal regions (obstacles).     

Markov chain approximations to filtering equations for reflecting diffusion processes

Herein, we consider direct Markov chain approximations to the Duncan–Mortensen–Zakai equations for nonlinear filtering problems on regular, bounded domains. For clarity of presentation, we restrict our attention to reflecting diffusion signals with symmetrizable generators. Our Markov chains are constructed by employing a wide band observation noise approximation, dividing the signal state space into cells, and utilizing an empirical measure process estimation. The upshot of our approximation is an efficient, effective algorithm for implementing such filtering problems. We prove that our approximations converge to the desired conditional distribution of the signal given the observation. Moreover, we use simulations to compare computational efficiency of this new method to the previously developed branching particle filter and interacting particle filter methods. This Markov chain method is demonstrated to outperform the two-particle filter methods on our simulated test problem, which is motivated by the fish farming industry.     

On Narrow Hexagonal Graphs with a 3-Homogeneous Suborbit

A connected graph of girth m 3 is called a polygonal graph if it contains a set of m-gons such that every path of length two is contained in a unique element of the set. In this paper we investigate polygonal graphs of girth 6 or more having automorphism groups which are transitive on the vertices and such that the vertex stabilizers are 3-homogeneous on adjacent vertices. We previously showed that the study of such graphs divides naturally into a number of substantial subcases. Here we analyze one of these cases and characterize the k-valent polygonal graphs of girth 6 which have automorphism groups transitive on vertices, which preserve the set of special hexagons, and which have a suborbit of size k – 1 at distance three from a given vertex.     

A new technique to compute polygonal schema for 2-manifolds with application to null-homotopy detection

We provide a new technique for deriving optimal-sized polygonal schema for triangulated compact 2-manifolds without boundary inO(n) time, wheren is the size of the given triangulationT. We first derive a polygonal schemaP embedded inT using Seifert-Van Kampen's theorem. A reduced polygonal schemaQ of optimal size is computed fromP, where a surjective map from the vertices ofP is retained to the vertices ofQ. This helps detecting null-homotopic (contractible to a point) cycles. Given a cycle of lengthk, we determine if it is null-homotopic inO(n+k logg) time and in θ(n+k) space, whereg is the genus of the given 2-manifold. The actual contraction for a null-homotopic cycle can be computed in θ(nk) time and space. This is a considerable improvement over the previous best-known algorithm for this problem.     

Call Center Staffing with Simulation and Cutting Plane Methods

We present an iterative cutting plane method for minimizing staffing costs in a service system subject to satisfying acceptable service level requirements over multiple time periods. We assume that the service level cannot be easily computed, and instead is evaluated using simulation. The simulation uses the method of common random numbers, so that the same sequence of random phenomena is observed when evaluating different staffing plans. In other words, we solve a sample average approximation problem. We establish convergence of the cutting plane method on a given sample average approximation. We also establish both convergence, and the rate of convergence, of the solutions to the sample average approximation to solutions of the original problem as the sample size increases. The cutting plane method relies on the service level functions being concave in the number of servers. We show how to verify this requirement as our algorithm proceeds. A numerical example showcases the properties of our method, and sheds light on when the concavity requirement can be expected to hold.     

On routing in VLSI design and communication networks

In this paper, we study the global routing problem in VLSI design and the multicast routing problem in communication networks. First we propose new and realistic models for both problems. In the global routing problem in VLSI design, we are given a lattice graph and subsets of the vertex set. The goal is to generate trees spanning these vertices in the subsets to minimize a linear combination of overall wirelength (edge length) and the number of bends of trees with respect to edge capacity constraints. In the multicast routing problem in communication networks, a graph is given to represent the network, together with subsets of the vertex set. We are required to find trees to span the given subsets and the overall edge length is minimized with respect to capacity constraints. Both problems are APX-hard. We present the integer linear programming (LP) formulation of both problems and solve the LP relaxations by the fast approximation algorithms for min-max resource-sharing problems in [K. Jansen, H. Zhang, Approximation algorithms for general packing problems and their application to the multicast congestion problem, Math. Programming, to appear, doi:10.1007/s10107-007-0106-8] (which is a generalization of the approximation algorithm proposed by Grigoriadis and Khachiyan [Coordination complexity of parallel price-directive decomposition, Math. Oper. Res. 2 (1996) 321-340]). For the global routing problem, we investigate the particular property of lattice graphs and propose a combinatorial technique to overcome the hardness due to the bend-dependent vertex cost. Finally, we develop asymptotic approximation algorithms for both problems with ratios depending on the best known approximation ratio for the minimum Steiner tree problem. They are the first known theoretical approximation bound results for the problems of minimizing the total costs (including both the edge and the bend costs) while spanning all given subsets of vertices.     

The modified method of refined bounds for polyhedral approximation of convex polytopes

The modified method of refined bounds is proposed and experimentally studied. This method is designed to iteratively approximate convex multidimensional polytopes with a large number of vertices. Approximation is realized by a sequence of convex polytopes with a relatively small but gradually increasing number of vertices. The results of an experimental comparison between the modified and the original methods of refined bounds are presented. The latter was designed for the polyhedral approximation of multidimensional convex compact bodies of general type.