Relative interleavings and applications to sensor networks (Q263062)

The theory of interleavings has proved to be one of the fundamental tools in the development of the theoretical framework of persistent homology. In this paper the authors introduce the notion of an interleaving of pairs of topological spaces. With this definition, and by means of the celebrated algebraic stability theorem, a stability result for relative sub level set persistence follows readily. Moreover, they bound the interleaving distance between relative Čech persistence modules built on pairs \((X,A)\) and \((Y,B)\) by a novel distance between \((X,A)\) and \((Y,A)\). This distance can be viewed as a (mild) generalization of the Gromov-Hausdorff distance to pairs of spaces. Similar bounds are also given for the Rips persistence module. The second part of the paper concerns the application of relative interleavings to a coverage problem for sensor networks. In [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 7, 339--358 (2007; Zbl 1134.55003)] \textit{V. de Silva} and \textit{R. Ghrist} provided conditions for a target domain in Euclidean space to be covered by a set of very simple sensors. In this paper this condition is generalized to provide a stability property of sensor coverings. That is, under this condition they prove that the domain will remain covered even after a sufficiently small (and well-behaved) perturbation of the sensors. Conditions for deactivating redundant sensors are also discussed.