Fully-Dynamic and Kinetic Conflict-Free Coloring of Intervals with Respect to Points

Abstract

We introduce the fully-dynamic conflict-free coloring problem for a set S of intervals in R^1 with respect to points, where the goal is to maintain a conflict-free coloring for S under insertions and deletions. A coloring is conflict-free if for each point p contained in some interval, p is contained in an interval whose color is not shared with any other interval containing p. We investigate trade-offs between the number of colors used and the number of intervals that are recolored upon insertion or deletion of an interval. Our results include:

- a lower bound on the number of recolorings as a function of the number of colors, which implies that with O(1) recolorings per update the worst-case number of colors is Omega(log n/log log n), and that any strategy using O(1/epsilon) colors needs Omega(epsilon n^epsilon) recolorings;

- a coloring strategy that uses O(log n) colors at the cost of O(log n) recolorings, and another strategy that uses O(1/epsilon) colors at the cost of O(n^epsilon/epsilon) recolorings;

- stronger upper and lower bounds for special cases.

We also consider the kinetic setting where the intervals move continuously (but there are no insertions or deletions); here we show how to maintain a coloring with only four colors at the cost of three recolorings per event and show this is tight.