Visibility Computation on Reconfigurable Meshes

Abstract

Visibility problems are investigated using reconfigurable meshes. A number of algorithms are proposed on the architecture for visibility computation in two and three dimensions. We show that visibility of a total ofndisjoint edges in the plane can be computed inO(1) time on ann×nmesh. The result is optimal in the word model of VLSI. For the case that the edges are not disjoint, the problem is shown to be solvable inO(1) time by using a mesh of slightly larger size or in slightly more time on ann×nmesh. We also present hidden-line and surface elimination algorithms that run on ann×n×nmesh for a set of disjoint triangles in 3-space containing a total ofnvertices inO(1) time andO(k) time, respectively, where 0 ≤k<nis an output-dependent parameter.