Efficient Covering of Thin Convex Domains Using Congruent Discs

We present efficient strategies for covering classes of thin domains in the plane using unit discs. We start with efficient covering of narrow domains using a single row of covering discs. We then move to efficient covering of general rectangles by discs centered at the lattice points of an irregular hexagonal lattice. This optimization uses a lattice that leads to a covering using a small number of discs. We compare the bounds on the covering using the presented strategies to the bounds obtained from the standard honeycomb covering, which is asymptotically optimal for fat domains, and show the improvement for thin domains.