71 research outputs found
Improved bounds and new techniques for Davenport-Schinzel sequences and their generalizations
Let lambda_s(n) denote the maximum length of a Davenport-Schinzel sequence of
order s on n symbols. For s=3 it is known that lambda_3(n) = Theta(n alpha(n))
(Hart and Sharir, 1986). For general s>=4 there are almost-tight upper and
lower bounds, both of the form n * 2^poly(alpha(n)) (Agarwal, Sharir, and Shor,
1989). Our first result is an improvement of the upper-bound technique of
Agarwal et al. We obtain improved upper bounds for s>=6, which are tight for
even s up to lower-order terms in the exponent. More importantly, we also
present a new technique for deriving upper bounds for lambda_s(n). With this
new technique we: (1) re-derive the upper bound of lambda_3(n) <= 2n alpha(n) +
O(n sqrt alpha(n)) (first shown by Klazar, 1999); (2) re-derive our own new
upper bounds for general s; and (3) obtain improved upper bounds for the
generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences considered by Adamec, Klazar, and
Valtr (1992). Regarding lower bounds, we show that lambda_3(n) >= 2n alpha(n) -
O(n), and therefore, the coefficient 2 is tight. We also present a simpler
version of the construction of Agarwal, Sharir, and Shor that achieves the
known lower bounds for even s>=4.Comment: To appear in Journal of the ACM. 48 pages, 3 figure
Sharp Bounds on Davenport-Schinzel Sequences of Every Order
One of the longest-standing open problems in computational geometry is to
bound the lower envelope of univariate functions, each pair of which
crosses at most times, for some fixed . This problem is known to be
equivalent to bounding the length of an order- Davenport-Schinzel sequence,
namely a sequence over an -letter alphabet that avoids alternating
subsequences of the form with length
. These sequences were introduced by Davenport and Schinzel in 1965 to
model a certain problem in differential equations and have since been applied
to bounding the running times of geometric algorithms, data structures, and the
combinatorial complexity of geometric arrangements.
Let be the maximum length of an order- DS sequence over
letters. What is asymptotically? This question has been answered
satisfactorily (by Hart and Sharir, Agarwal, Sharir, and Shor, Klazar, and
Nivasch) when is even or . However, since the work of Agarwal,
Sharir, and Shor in the mid-1980s there has been a persistent gap in our
understanding of the odd orders.
In this work we effectively close the problem by establishing sharp bounds on
Davenport-Schinzel sequences of every order . Our results reveal that,
contrary to one's intuition, behaves essentially like
when is odd. This refutes conjectures due to Alon et al.
(2008) and Nivasch (2010).Comment: A 10-page extended abstract will appear in the Proceedings of the
Symposium on Computational Geometry, 201
On interference among moving sensors and related problems
We show that for any set of points moving along "simple" trajectories
(i.e., each coordinate is described with a polynomial of bounded degree) in
and any parameter , one can select a fixed non-empty
subset of the points of size , such that the Voronoi diagram of
this subset is "balanced" at any given time (i.e., it contains points
per cell). We also show that the bound is near optimal even for
the one dimensional case in which points move linearly in time. As
applications, we show that one can assign communication radii to the sensors of
a network of moving sensors so that at any given time their interference is
. We also show some results in kinetic approximate range
counting and kinetic discrepancy. In order to obtain these results, we extend
well-known results from -net theory to kinetic environments
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