Positive Planar Satisfiability Problems under 3-Connectivity Constraints

Abstract: A 3-SAT problem is called positive and planar if all the literals are positive and the clause-variable incidence graph (i.e., SAT graph) is planar. The NAE 3-SAT and 1-in-3-SAT are two variants of 3-SAT that remain NP-complete even when they are positive. The positive 1-in-3-SAT problem remains NP-complete under planarity constraint, but planar NAE 3-SAT is solvable in $O(n^{1.5}\log n)$ time. In this paper we prove that a positive planar NAE 3-SAT is always satisfiable when the underlying SAT graph is 3-connected, and a satisfiable assignment can be obtained in linear time. We also show that without 3-connectivity constraint, existence of a linear-time algorithm for positive planar NAE 3-SAT problem is unlikely as it would imply a linear-time algorithm for finding a spanning 2-matching in a planar subcubic graph. We then prove that positive planar 1-in-3-SAT remains NP-complete under the 3-connectivity constraint, even when each variable appears in at most 4 clauses. However, we show that the 3-connected planar 1-in-3-SAT is always satisfiable when each variable appears in an even number of clauses.