Rectangular Partitions of a Rectilinear Polygon

Abstract: We investigate the problem of partitioning a rectilinear polygon $P$ with $n$ vertices and no holes % with no holes into rectangles using disjoint line segments drawn inside $P$ under two optimality criteria. In the minimum ink partition, the total length of the line segments drawn inside $P$ is minimized. We present an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm using $O(n^2)$ space that returns a minimum ink partition of $P$. In the thick partition, the minimum side length over all resulting rectangles is maximized. We present an $O(n^3 \log^2{n})$-time algorithm using $O(n^3)$ space that returns a thick partition using line segments incident to vertices of $P$, and an $O(n^6 \log^2{n})$-time algorithm using $O(n^6)$ space that returns a thick partition using line segments incident to the boundary of $P$. We also show that if the input rectilinear polygon has holes, the corresponding decision problem for the thick partition problem using line segments incident to vertices of the polygon is NP-complete. We also present an $O(m^3)$-time $3$-approximation algorithm for the minimum ink partition for a rectangle containing $m$ point holes.