Unit disk graphs are intersection graphs of circles of unit radius in the plane. We present simple and provably good heuristics for a number of classical NP-hard optimization problems on unit disk graphs. The problems considered include maximum independent set, minimum vertex cover, minimum coloring and minimum dominating set. We also present an on-line coloring heuristic which achieves a competitive ratio of 6 for unit disk graphs. Our heuristics do not need a geometric representation of unit disk graphs. Geometric representations are used only in establishing the performance guarantees of the heuristics. Several of our approximation algorithms can be extended to intersection graphs of circles of arbitrary radii in the plane, intersection graphs of regular polygons, and to intersection graphs of higher dimensional regular objects.

We present NC approximation schemes for a number of graph problems when restricted to geometric graphs including unit disk graphs and graphs drawn in a civilized manner. Our approximation schemes exhibit the same time versus performance trade-off as the best known approximation schemes for planar graphs. We also define the concept of -precision unit disk graphs and show that for such graphs the approximation schemes have a better time versus performance trade-off than the approximation schemes for arbitrary unit disk graphs. Moreover, compared to unit disk graphs, we show that for -precision unit disk graphs, many more graph problems have efficient approximation schemes. Our NC approximation schemes can also be extended to obtain efficient NC approximation schemes for several PSPACE-hard problems on unit disk graphs specified using a restricted version of the hierarchical specification language of Bentley, Ottmann and Widmayer. The approximation schemes for hierarchically specified un...

In many applications of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, position-awareness is of great importance. Often, as in the case of geometric routing, it is sufficient to have virtual coordinates, rather than real coordinates. In this paper, we address the problem of obtaining virtual coordinates based on connectivity information. In particular, we propose the first approximation algorithm for this problem and discuss implementational aspects.

Finding a good embedding of a unit disk graph given by its connectivity information is a problem of practical importance in a variety of fields. In wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, such an embedding can be used to obtain virtual coordinates. In this paper, we prove a non-approximability result for the problem of embedding a given unit disk graph. Particularly, we show that if non-neighboring nodes are not allowed to be closer to each other than distance 1, then two neighbors can be as far apart as #, where # goes to 0 as n goes to infinity, unless P = NP . We further show that finding a realization of a d-quasi unit disk graph with 1/ # 2 is NP -hard.

In this paper we provide a theoretical foundation for the problem of network localization in which some nodes know their locations and other nodes determine their locations by measuring the distances to their neighbors. We construct grounded graphs to model network localization and apply graph rigidity theory to test the conditions for unique localizability and to construct uniquely localizable networks. We further study the computational complexity of network localization and investigate a subclass of grounded graphs where localization can be computed efficiently. We conclude with a discussion of localization in sensor networks where the sensors are placed randomly.

Map labeling is of fundamental importance in cartography and geographical information systems and is one of the areas targeted for research by the ACM Computational Geometry Impact Task Force. Previous work on map labeling has focused on the problem of placing maximal uniform, axis-aligned, disjoint rectangles on the plane so that each point feature to be labeled lies at the corner of one rectangle. Here, we consider a number of variants of the map labeling problem. We obtain three general types of results. First, we devise constant-factor polynomial-time approximation algorithms for labeling point features by rectangular labels, where the feature may lie anywhere on the boundary of its label region and where labeling rectangles may be placed in any orientation. These results generalize to the case of elliptical labels. Secondly, we consider the problem of labeling a map consisting of disjoint rectilinear line segments. We obtain constant-factor polynomial-time approximation algorithms for the general problem and an optimal algorithm for the special case where all segments are horizontal. Finally, we formulate a bicriteria version of the map-labeling problem and provide bicriteria polynomial-time approximation schemes for a number of such problems.

In this paper the coloring problem for unit disk (UD) graphs is considered. UD graphs are the intersection graphs of equal sized disks in the plane. Colorings of UD graphs arise in the study of channel assignment problems in broadcast networks. Improving on a result of Clark, Colbourn and Johnson (1990) it is shown that the coloring problem for UD graphs remains NP-complete for any fixed number of colors k 3. Furthermore, a 3-approximation algorithm for the problem is presented which is based on network flow and matching techniques, and it is pointed out how this technique can be applied to more general classes of disk graphs. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Preliminaries 2 3 The UD k-Colorability Problem 5 3.1 The Construction of the Auxiliary Graphs : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 6 3.2 The Embedding of the UD Graph : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8 3.2.1 The Embedding of the Given Graph : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8 3.2.2 The Embedding ...

The distributed complexity of computing a maximal independent set in a graph is of both practical and theoretical importance. While there exists an elegant O(log n) time randomized algorithm for general graphs [20], no deterministic polylogarithmic algorithm is known. In this paper, we study the problem in graphs with bounded growth, an important family of graphs which includes the well-known unit disk graph and many variants thereof. Particularly, we propose a deterministic algorithm that computes a maximal independent set in time O(log \Delta * log*n) in graphs with bounded growth, where n and \Delta denote the number of nodes and the maximal degree in G, respectively.

We present efficient distributed algorithms for computing 2-hop neighborhoods in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks. The knowledge of the 2-hop neighborhood is assumed in many protocols and algorithms for routing, clustering, and distributed channel assignment, but no efficient distributed algorithms for computing the 2-hop neighborhoods were previously published. The problem is nontrivial,...

In this paper, we study the approximability of several layout problems on a family of random geometric graphs. Vertices of random geometric graphs are randomly distributed on the unit square and are connected by edges whenever they are closer than some given parameter. The layout problems that we consider are: Bandwidth, Minimum Linear Arrangement, Minimum Cut Width, Minimum Sum Cut, Vertex Separation and Edge Bisection. We first prove that some of these problems remain NP-complete even for geometric graphs. Afterwards, we compute lower bounds that hold, almost surely, for random geometric graphs. Then, we present two heuristics that, almost surely, turn to be constant approximation algorithms for our layout problems on random geometric graphs. In fact, for the Bandwidth and Vertex Separation problems, these heuristics are asymptotically optimal. Finally, we use the theoretical results in order to empirically compare these and other well-known heuristics. # This research was partially ...