Unique Set Cover on Unit Disks and Unit Squares

Abstract

We study the Unique Set Cover problem on unit disks and unit squares. For a given set $P$ of $n$ points and a set $D$ of $m$ geometric objects both in the plane, the objective of the Unique Set Cover problem is to select a subset $D^{\prime }\subseteq D$ of objects such that every point in $P$ is covered by at least one object in $D^{\prime }$ and the number of points covered uniquely is maximized, where a point is covered uniquely if the point is covered by exactly one object in $D^{\prime }$. In this paper, (i) we show that the Unique Set Cover is NP-hard on both unit disks and unit squares, and (ii) we give a PTAS for this problem on unit squares by applying the mod-one approach of Chan and Hu (Comput. Geom. 48(5), 2015).