Improved approximation algorithms for box contact representations

Michael A. Bekos, Thomas C. Van Dijk, Martin Fink, Philipp Kindermann, Stephen Kobourov, Sergey Pupyrev, Joachim Spoerhase, Alexander Wolff

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the following geometric representation problem: Given a graph whose vertices correspond to axis-aligned rectangles with fixed dimensions, arrange the rectangles without overlaps in the plane such that two rectangles touch if the graph contains an edge between them. This problem is called Contact Representation of Word Networks (Crown) since it formalizes the geometric problem behind drawing word clouds in which semantically related words are close to each other. Crown is known to be NP-hard, and there are approximation algorithms for certain graph classes for the optimization version, Max-Crown, in which realizing each desired adjacency yields a certain profit. We show that the problem is APX-complete on bipartite graphs of bounded maximum degree. We present the first O(1)-approximation algorithm for the general case, when the input is a complete weighted graph, and for the bipartite case. Since the subgraph of realized adjacencies is necessarily planar, we consider several planar graph classes (stars, trees, outerplanar, and planar graphs), improving upon the known results. For some graph classes, we also describe improvements in the unweighted case, where each adjacency yields the same profit.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAlgorithms, ESA 2014 - 22nd Annual European Symposium, Proceedings
PublisherSpringer-Verlag
Pages87-99
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783662447765
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Event22nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms, ESA 2014 - Wroclaw, Poland
Duration: Sep 8 2014Sep 10 2014

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume8737 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other22nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms, ESA 2014
Country/TerritoryPoland
CityWroclaw
Period9/8/149/10/14

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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