Recursive Midpoint Search for Line of Sight

• Published in: Proceedings - Winter Simulation Conference pp. 1 - 10
• Main Authors: Evangelista, Paul F., Mittal, Vikram
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 12.12.2021
• Subjects: Analytical models; Arrays; Data models; Heuristic algorithms; Indexing
• ISSN: 1558-4305
• DOI: 10.1109/WSC52266.2021.9715432

Line of sight (LoS) calculation and LoS analytics support a wide variety of applications, particularly simulations that involve interactions of entities across simulated terrain. This research proposes a LoS algorithm that recursively searches the midpoints of array segments and shows significant efficiency over a naive linear search. The algorithm casts every LoS query into an array of length 2^{n} , enabling precise and complete indexing of an array ordered by the recursive midpoints of the array. This method samples the array with broadness and symmetry. Experimental results demonstrate significant efficiencies when compared to linear search approaches for LoS. This search algorithm has the potential to apply more broadly to any situations that benefit from the binary search of unknown data that may be autocorrelated.