A new approximation algorithm for labeling points with circle pairs

We study the NP-hard problem of labeling points with maximum-radius circle pairs: given n point sites in the plane, find a placement for 2n interior-disjoint uniform circles, such that each site touches two circles and the circle radius is maximized. We present a new approximation algorithm for this problem that runs in time and O(n) space and achieves an approximation factor of (≈1.486+ε), which improves the previous best bound of 1.491+ε.