Online Hitting Sets for Disks of Bounded Radii

We present algorithms for the online minimum hitting set problem: Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane and a sequence of geometric objects that arrive one-by-one, we need to maintain a hitting set at all times. For disks of radii in the interval $[1,M]$, we present a $O(\log M \log n)$-competitive algorithm. This result generalizes from disks to positive homothets of any convex body in the plane with scaling factors in the interval $[1,M]$. As a main technical tool, we reduce the problem to the online hitting set problem for integer points and bottomless rectangles. Specifically, we present an $O(\log N)$-competitive algorithm for the variant where $P$ is a set of integer points in an $N\times N$ box, and the geometric objects are bottomless rectangles.
Comment: 26 pages and 19 figures