Date of Award:

5-2018

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Computer Science

Committee Chair(s)

Haitao Wang

Committee

Haitao Wang

Committee

David Brown

Committee

Curtis Dyreson

Committee

Amanda Lee Hughes

Committee

Minghui Jiang

Abstract

In this dissertation, we study several problems related to intervals and develop efficient algorithms for them. Interval problems have many applications in reality because many objects, values, and ranges are intervals in nature, such as time intervals, distances, line segments, probabilities, etc. Problems on intervals are gaining attention also because intervals are among the most basic geometric objects, and for the same reason, computational geometry techniques find useful for attacking these problems. Specifically, the problems we study in this dissertation includes the following: balanced splitting on weighted intervals, minimizing the movements of spreading points, dispersing points on intervals, multiple barrier coverage, and separating overlapped intervals on a line. We develop efficient algorithms for these problems and our results are either first known solutions or improve the previous work.

In the problem of balanced splitting on weighted intervals, we are given a set of n intervals with non-negative weights on a line and an integer k ≥ 1. The goal is to find k points to partition the line into k + 1 segments, such that the maximum sum of the interval weights in these segments is minimized. We give an algorithm that solves the problem in O(n log n) time. Our second problem is on minimizing the movements of spreading points. In this problem, we are given a set of points on a line and we want to spread the points on the line so that the minimum pairwise distance of all points is no smaller than a given value δ. The objective is to minimize the maximum moving distance of all points. We solve the problem in O(n) time. We also solve the cycle version of the problem in linear time. For the third problem, we are given a set of n non-overlapping intervals on a line and we want to place a point on each interval so that the minimum pairwise distance of all points are maximized. We present an O(n) time algorithm for the problem. We also solve its cycle version in O(n) time. The fourth problem is on multiple barrier coverage, where we are given n sensors in the plane and m barriers (represented by intervals) on a line. The goal is to move the sensors onto the line to cover all the barriers such that the maximum moving distance of all sensors is minimized. Our algorithm for the problem runs in O(n2 log n log log n + nm log m) time. In a special case where the sensors are all initially on the line, our algorithm runs in O((n + m) log(n + m)) time. Finally, for the problem of separating overlapped intervals, we have a set of n intervals (possibly overlapped) on a line and we want to move them along the line so that no two intervals properly intersect. The objective is to minimize the maximum moving distance of all intervals. We propose an O(n log n) time algorithm for the problem.

The algorithms and techniques developed in this dissertation are quite basic and fundamental, so they might be useful for solving other related problems on intervals as well.

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