English

Moving intervals for packing and covering

Computational Geometry 2021-09-06 v1 Computational Complexity Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

We study several problems on geometric packing and covering with movement. Given a family I\mathcal{I} of nn intervals of κ\kappa distinct lengths, and another interval BB, can we pack the intervals in I\mathcal{I} inside BB (respectively, cover BB by the intervals in I\mathcal{I}) by moving τ\tau intervals and keeping the other σ=nτ\sigma = n - \tau intervals unmoved? We show that both packing and covering are W[1]-hard with any one of κ\kappa, τ\tau, and σ\sigma as single parameter, but are FPT with combined parameters κ\kappa and τ\tau. We also obtain improved polynomial-time algorithms for packing and covering, including an O(nlog2n)O(n\log^2 n) time algorithm for covering, when all intervals in I\mathcal{I} have the same length.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.00579,
  title  = {Moving intervals for packing and covering},
  author = {Rain Jiang and Kai Jiang and Minghui Jiang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.00579},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T05:36:28.528Z