Minimum Enclosing Circle of a Set of Fixed Points and a Mobile Point

Given a set S of n static points and a mobile point p in ℝ2, we study the variations of the smallest circle that encloses S ∪ {p} when p moves along a straight line ℓ. In this work, a complete characterization of the locus of the center of the minimum enclosing circle (MEC) of S ∪ {p}, for p ∈ ℓ, is presented. The locus is a continuous and piecewise differentiable linear function, and each of its differentiable pieces lies either on the edges of the farthest-point Voronoi diagram of S, or on a line segment parallel to the line ℓ. Moreover, the locus has differentiable pieces, which can be computed in linear time, given the farthest-point Voronoi diagram of S.