Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications
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Given a set $\mathcal{S}$ of segments in the plane, a polygon P is an intersecting polygon of $\mathcal{S}$ if every segment in $\mathcal{S}$ intersects the interior or the boundary of P. The problem MPIP of computing a minimum-perimeter intersecting polygon of a given set of n segments in the plane was first considered by Rappaport in 1995. This problem is not known to be polynomial, nor it is known to be NP-hard. Rappaport (Int. J. Comput. Geom. Appl. 5:243–265, 1995) gave an exponential-time exact algorithm for MPIP. Hassanzadeh and Rappaport (Proceedings of the 23rd International Workshop on Algorithms and Data Structures, LNCS, vol. 5664, pp. 363–374, 2009) gave a polynomial-time approximation algorithm with ratio $\frac{\pi}{2} \approx 1.57$. In this paper, we present two improved approximation algorithms for MPIP: a 1.28-approximation algorithm by linear programming, and a polynomial-time approximation scheme by discretization and enumeration. Our algorithms can be generalized for computing an approximate minimum-perimeter intersecting polygon of a set of convex polygons in the plane. From the other direction, we show that computing a minimum-perimeter intersecting polygon of a set of (not necessarily convex) simple polygons is NP-hard.