Covering 1.5D Terrain by Common Height Towers

Abstract

Finding the minimum number of towers to cover a 1.5D terrain is an intractable problem. We propose an easily implementable approximation algorithm for covering a 1.5D terrain by towers of given common height. We describe a technique of identifying potential input points where tower bases can be installed. We show how a small subset of these placement points can be computed so that towers placed on such points can cover the entire terrain.