Intersection Graphs Of Rectangles Research Articles

Intersection models and forbidden pattern characterizations for 2-thin and proper 2-thin graphs

The thinness of a graph is a width parameter that generalizes some properties of interval graphs, which are exactly the graphs of thinness one. Graphs with thinness at most two include, for example, bipartite convex graphs. Many NP-complete problems can be solved in polynomial time for graphs with bounded thinness, given a suitable representation of the graph. Proper thinness is defined analogously, generalizing proper interval graphs, and a larger family of NP-complete problems are known to be polynomially solvable for graphs with bounded proper thinness.The complexity of recognizing 2-thin and proper 2-thin graphs is still open. In this work, we present characterizations of 2-thin and proper 2-thin graphs as intersection graphs of rectangles in the plane, as vertex intersection graphs of paths on a grid (VPG graphs), and by forbidden ordered patterns. We also prove that independent 2-thin graphs are exactly the interval bigraphs, and that proper independent 2-thin graphs are exactly the bipartite permutation graphs.Finally, we take a step towards placing the thinness and its variations in the landscape of width parameters, by upper bounding the proper thinness in terms of the bandwidth.

An Algorithmic Study of Fully Dynamic Independent Sets for Map Labeling

Map labeling is a classical problem in cartography and geographic information systems that asks to place labels for area, line, and point features, with the goal to select and place the maximum number of independent (i.e., overlap-free) labels. A practically interesting case is point labeling with axis-parallel rectangular labels of common size. In a fully dynamic setting, at each timestep, either a new label appears or an existing label disappears. Then, the challenge is to maintain a maximum cardinality subset of pairwise independent labels with sublinear update time. Motivated by this, we study the maximal independent set ( MIS ) and maximum independent set ( Max-IS ) problems on fully dynamic (insertion/deletion model) sets of axis-parallel rectangles of two types: (i) uniform height and width and (ii) uniform height and arbitrary width; both settings can be modeled as rectangle intersection graphs. We present the first deterministic algorithm for maintaining an MIS (and thus a 4-approximate Max-IS ) of a dynamic set of uniform rectangles with polylogarithmic update time. This breaks the natural barrier of \( \Omega (\Delta) \) update time (where \( \Delta \) is the maximum degree in the graph) for vertex updates presented by Assadi et al. (STOC 2018). We continue by investigating Max-IS and provide a series of deterministic dynamic approximation schemes. For uniform rectangles, we first give an algorithm that maintains a 4-approximate Max-IS with \( O(1) \) update time. In a subsequent algorithm, we establish the trade-off between approximation quality \( 2(1+\frac{1}{k}) \) and update time \( O(k^2\log n) \) , for \( k\in \mathbb {N} \) . We conclude with an algorithm that maintains a 2-approximate Max-IS for dynamic sets of unit-height and arbitrary-width rectangles with \( O(\log ^2 n + \omega \log n) \) update time, where \( \omega \) is the maximum size of an independent set of rectangles stabbed by any horizontal line. We implement our algorithms and report the results of an experimental comparison exploring the trade-off between solution quality and update time for synthetic and real-world map labeling instances. We made several major observations in our empirical study. First, the original approximations are well above their respective worst-case ratios. Second, in comparison with the static approaches, the dynamic approaches show a significant speedup in practice. Third, the approximation algorithms show their predicted relative behavior. The better the solution quality, the worse the update times. Fourth, a simple greedy augmentation to the approximate solutions of the algorithms boost the solution sizes significantly in practice.

Intersection models for 2-thin and proper 2-thin graphs

The thinness of a graph is a width parameter that generalizes some properties of interval graphs, which are exactly the graphs of thinness one. Graphs with thinness at most two include, for example, bipartite convex graphs. Many NP-complete problems can be solved in polynomial time for graphs with bounded thinness, given a suitable representation of the graph. Proper thinness is defined analogously, generalizing proper interval graphs, and a larger family of NP-complete problems are known to be polynomially solvable for graphs with bounded proper thinness. It is known that the thinness of a graph is at most its pathwidth plus one. In this work, we prove that the proper thinness of a graph is at most its bandwidth, for graphs with at least one edge. It is also known that boxicity is a lower bound for the thinness. The main results of this work are characterizations of 2-thin and 2-proper thin graphs as intersection graphs of rectangles in the plane with sides parallel to the Cartesian axes and other specific conditions. We also bound the bend number of graphs with low thinness as vertex intersection graphs of paths on a grid (Bk-VPG graphs are the graphs that have a representation in which each path has at most k bends). We show that 2-thin graphs are a subclass of B1-VPG graphs (moreover, of L-graphs, that is, B1-VPG graphs admitting a representation that uses only one of the four possible shapes ⌊,⌋⌈,⌉), and that 3-thin graphs are a subclass of B3-VPG graphs. We also show that B0-VPG graphs may have arbitrarily large thinness, and that not every 4-thin graph is a VPG graph.

On rectangle intersection graphs with stab number at most two

Rectangle intersection graphs are the intersection graphs of axis-parallel rectangles in the plane. A graph G is said to be a k-stabbable rectangle intersection graph, or k-SRIG for short, if it has a rectangle intersection representation in which k horizontal lines can be placed such that each rectangle intersects at least one of them. In this article, we introduce some natural subclasses of 2-SRIG and study the containment relationships among them. It is shown that one of these subclasses can be recognized in linear-time if the input graphs are restricted to be triangle-free. We also make observations about the chromatic number of 2-SRIGs. It is shown that the Chromatic Number problem is NP-complete for 2-SRIGs, by showing that the problem is NP-complete for 2-row B0-VPGs. This is a strengthening of some known results from the literature.

On the Stab Number of Rectangle Intersection Graphs

We introduce the notion of stab number and exact stab number of rectangle intersection graphs, otherwise known as graphs of boxicity at most 2. A graph G is said to be a k-stabbable rectangle intersection graph, or k-SRIG for short, if it has a rectangle intersection representation in which k horizontal lines can be chosen such that each rectangle is intersected by at least one of them. If there exists such a representation with the additional property that each rectangle intersects exactly one of the k horizontal lines, then the graph G is said to be a k-exactly stabbable rectangle intersection graph, or k-ESRIG for short. The stab number of a graph G, denoted by stab(G), is the minimum integer k such that G is a k-SRIG. Similarly, the exact stab number of a graph G, denoted by estab(G), is the minimum integer k such that G is a k-ESRIG. In this work, we study the stab number and exact stab number of some subclasses of rectangle intersection graphs. A lower bound on the stab number of rectangle intersection graphs in terms of its pathwidth and clique number is shown. Tight upper bounds on the exact stab number of split graphs with boxicity at most 2 and block graphs are also given. We show that for k ≤ 3, k-SRIG is equivalent to k-ESRIG and for any k ≥ 10, there is a tree which is a k-SRIG but not a k-ESRIG. We also develop a forbidden structure characterization for block graphs that are 2-ESRIG and trees that are 3-ESRIG, which lead to polynomial-time recognition algorithms for these two classes of graphs. These forbidden structures are natural generalizations of asteroidal triples. Finally, we construct examples to show that these forbidden structures are not sufficient to characterize block graphs that are 3-SRIG or trees that are k-SRIG for any k ≥ 4.

Approximating dominating set on intersection graphs of rectangles and [formula omitted]-frames

We consider the Minimum Dominating Set (MDS) problem on the intersection graphs of geometric objects. Even for simple and widely-used geometric objects such as rectangles, no sub-logarithmic approximation is known for the problem and (perhaps surprisingly) the problem is NP-hard even when all the rectangles are “anchored” at a diagonal line with slope -1 (Pandit, CCCG 2017). In this paper, we first show that for any ϵ>0, there exists a (2+ϵ)-approximation algorithm for the MDS problem on “diagonal-anchored” rectangles, providing the first O(1)-approximation for the problem on a non-trivial subclass of rectangles. It is not hard to see that the MDS problem on “diagonal-anchored” rectangles is the same as the MDS problem on “diagonal-anchored” L-frames: the union of a vertical and a horizontal line segment that share an endpoint. As such, we also obtain a (2+ϵ)-approximation for the problem with “diagonal-anchored” L-frames.On the other hand, we show that the problem is APX-hard in case the input L-frames intersect the diagonal, or the horizontal segments of the L-frames intersect a vertical line. However, as we show, the problem is linear-time solvable in case the L-frames intersect a vertical as well as a horizontal line. Finally, we consider the MDS problem in the so-called “edge intersection model” and obtain a number of results, answering two questions posed by Mehrabi (WAOA 2017).

A note on maximum independent sets in rectangle intersection graphs

Finding the maximum independent set in the intersection graph of n axis-parallel rectangles is NP-hard. We re-examine two known approximation results for this problem. For the case of rectangles of unit height, Agarwal, van Kreveld and Suri [Comput. Geom. Theory Appl. 11 (1998) 209–218] gave a (1+1/ k)-factor algorithm with an O( nlog n+ n 2 k−1 ) time bound for any integer constant k⩾1; we describe a similar algorithm running in only O( nlog n+ nΔ k−1 ) time, where Δ⩽ n denotes the maximum number of rectangles a point can be in. For the general case, Berman, DasGupta, Muthukrishnan and Ramaswami [J. Algorithms 41 (2001) 443–470] gave a ⌈log k n⌉-factor algorithm with an O( n k+1 ) time bound for any integer constant k⩾2; we describe similar algorithms running in O( nlog n+ nΔ k−2 ) and n O( k/log k) time.

Tool design problems in a punch press flexible manufacturing system

In this paper, we study tool design problems encountered in using a punch press Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) for producing flat sheet-metal parts. We consider the problem of designing the minimum number of tools needed to punch a given set of holes in the parts. Holes described by a single attribute as well as two attributes are considered. We model the tool design problems as graph theoretic problems. Such an approach is believed to be new for the problem studied. We have made the following major contributions: First, we show that the two-attribute tool design problem is equivalent to the minimum clique cover problem on the intersection graph of rectangles, which is a well known NP-complete problem. Second, we develop a fast algorithm to construct a set-covering formulation from the underlying graph model. In addition, we show that our approach has applications beyond the tool design problem (e.g., location problems).

On the 2-Dimensional Channel Assignment Problem

We consider the 2-dimensional channel assignment problem: given a set S of iso-oriented rectangles (whose sides are parallel to the coordinate axes), find a minimum number of planes (channels) to which only nonoverlapping rectangles are assigned. This problem is equivalent to the coloring problem of the rectangle intersection graph G = (V, E), in which each vertex in V corresponds to a rectangle and two vertices are adjacent iff their corresponding rectangles overlap, and we ask for an assignment of a minimum number of colors to the vertices such that no adjacent vertices are assigned the same color. We show that the problem is NP-hard.

Finding the connected components and a maximum clique of an intersection graph of rectangles in the plane

An intersection graph of rectangles in the ( x, y)-plane with sides parallel to the axes is obtained by representing each rectangle by a vertex and connecting two vertices by an edge if and only if the corresponding rectangles intersect. This paper describes algorithms for two problems on intersection graphs of rectangles in the plane. One is an O( n log n) algorithm for finding the connected components of an intersection graph of n rectangles. This algorithm is optimal to within a constant factor. The other is an O( n log n) algorithm for finding a maximum clique of such a graph. It seems interesting that the maximum clique problem is polynomially solvable, because other related problems, such as the maximum stable set problem and the minimum clique cover problem, are known to be NP-complete for intersection graphs of rectangles. Furthermore, we briefly show that the k-colorability problem on intersection graphs of rectangles is NP-complete.