Minimum Dominating Set Problem for Unit Disks Revisited

In this article, we study approximation algorithms for the problem of computing minimum dominating set for a given set [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] unit disks in [Formula: see text]. We first present a simple [Formula: see text] time 5-factor approximation algorithm for this problem, where [Formula: see text] is the size of the output. The best known 4-factor and 3-factor approximation algorithms for the same problem run in time [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] respectively [M. De, G. K. Das, P. Carmi and S. C. Nandy, Approximation algorithms for a variant of discrete piercing set problem for unit disks, Int. J. of Computational Geometry and Appl., 22(6):461–477, 2013]. We show that the time complexity of the in-place 4-factor approximation algorithm for this problem can be improved to [Formula: see text]. A minor modification of this algorithm produces a [Formula: see text]-factor approximation algorithm in [Formula: see text] time. The same techniques can be applied to have a 3-factor and a [Formula: see text]-factor approximation algorithms in time [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] respectively. Finally, we propose a very important shifting lemma, which is of independent interest, and it helps to present [Formula: see text]-factor approximation algorithm for the same problem. It also helps to improve the time complexity of the proposed PTAS for the problem.