We consider the problem of minimizing the largest generalized eigenvalue of a pair of symmetric matrices, each of which depends affinely on the decision variables. Although this problem may appear specialized, it is in fact quite general, and includes for example all linear, quadratic, and linear fractional programs. Many problems arising in control theory can be cast in this form. The problem is nondifferentiable but quasiconvex, so methods such as Kelley's cuttingplane algorithm or the ellipsoid algorithm of Shor, Nemirovksy, and Yudin are guaranteed to minimize it. In this paper we describe relevant background material and a simple interior point method that solves such problems more efficiently. The algorithm is a variation on Huard's method of centers, using a self-concordant barrier for matrix inequalities developed by Nesterov and Nemirovsky. (Nesterov and Nemirovsky have also extended their potential reduction methods to handle the same problem [NN91b].) Since the problem is quasiconvex but not convex, devising a non-heuristic stopping criterion (i.e., one that guarantees a given accuracy) is more difficult than in the convex case. We describe several non-heuristic stopping criteria that are based on the dual of a related convex problem and a new ellipsoidal approximation that is slightly sharper, in some cases, than a more general result due to Nesterov and Nemirovsky. The algorithm is demonstrated on an example: determining the quadratic Lyapunov function that optimizes a decay rate estimate for a differential inclusion.

In this paper a symmetric primal-dual transformation for positive semidefinite programming is proposed. For standard SDP problems, after this symmetric transformation the primal variables and the dual slacks become identical. In the context of linear programming, existence of such a primal-dual transformation is a well known fact. Based on this symmetric primal-dual transformation we derive Newton search directions for primal-dual path-following algorithms for semidefinite programming. In particular, we generalize: (1) the short step path following algorithm, (2) the predictor-corrector algorithm and (3) the largest step algorithm to semidefinite programming. It is shown that these algorithms require at most O( p n j log ffl j) main iterations for computing an ffl-optimal solution. The symmetric primal-dual transformation discussed in this paper can be interpreted as a specialization of the scaling-point concept introduced by Nesterov and Todd [12] for self-scaled conic problems. The ...

When constructing a classifier, the probability of correct classification of future data points should be maximized. We consider a binary classification problem where the mean and covariance matrix of each class are assumed to be known. No further assumptions are made with respect to the class-conditional distributions. Misclassification probabilities are then controlled in a worst-case setting: that is, under all possible choices of class-conditional densities with given mean and covariance matrix, we minimize the worst-case (maximum) probability of misclassification of future data points. For a linear decision boundary, this desideratum is translated in a very direct way into a (convex) second order cone optimization problem, with complexity similar to a support vector machine problem. The minimax problem can be interpreted geometrically as minimizing the maximum of the Mahalanobis distances to the two classes. We address the issue of robustness with respect to estimation errors (in the means and covariances of the

. A variety of analysis and design problems in control, communication and information theory, statistics, combinatorial optimization, computational geometry, circuit design, and other fields can be expressed as semidefinite programming problems (SDPs) or determinant maximization problems (max-det problems). These problems often have matrix structure, i.e., some of the optimization variables are matrices. This matrix structure has two important practical ramifications: first, it makes the job of translating the problem into a standard SDP or maxdet format tedious, and, second, it opens the possibility of exploiting the structure to speed up the computation. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of sdpsol, a parser/solver for SDPs and max-det problems. sdpsol allows problems with matrix structure to be described in a simple, natural, and convenient way. Although the current implementation of sdpsol does not exploit matrix structure in the solution algorithm, the languag...

We describe a new method for determining component values and transistor dimensions for CMOS operational ampli ers (op-amps). We observe that a wide variety of design objectives and constraints have a special form, i.e., they are posynomial functions of the design variables. As a result the ampli er design problem can be expressed as a special form of optimization problem called geometric programming, for which very e cient global optimization methods have been developed. As a consequence we can e ciently determine globally optimal ampli er designs, or globally optimal trade-o s among competing performance measures such aspower, open-loop gain, and bandwidth. Our method therefore yields completely automated synthesis of (globally) optimal CMOS ampli ers, directly from speci cations. In this paper we apply this method to a speci c, widely used operational ampli er architecture, showing in detail how to formulate the design problem as a geometric program. We compute globally optimal trade-o curves relating performance measures such as power dissipation, unity-gain bandwidth, and open-loop gain. We show how the method can be used to synthesize robust designs, i.e., designs guaranteed to meet the speci cations for a

In this paper we consider semidenite programs (SDPs) whose data depends on some unknown-but-bounded perturbation parameters. We seek "robust" solutions to such programs, that is, solutions which minimize the (worst-case) objective while satisfying the constraints for every possible values of parameters within the given bounds. Assuming the data matrices are rational functions of the perturbation parameters, we show how to formulate sufficient conditions for a robust solution to exist, as SDPs. When the perturbation is "full", our conditions are necessary and sufficient. In this case, we provide sufficient conditions which guarantee that the robust solution is unique, and continuous (Hölder-stable) with respect to the unperturbed problems' data. The approach can thus be used to regularize ill-conditioned SDPs. We illustrate our results with examples taken from linear programming, maximum norm minimization, polynomial interpolation and integer programming.

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There is growing interest in optimization problems with real symmetric matrices as variables. Generally the matrix functions involved are spectral: they depend only on the eigenvalues of the matrix. It is known that convex spectral functions can be characterized exactly as symmetric convex functions of the eigenvalues. A new approach to this characterization is given, via a simple Fenchel conjugacy formula. We then apply this formula to derive expressions for subdifferentials, and to study duality relationships for convex optimization problems with positive semidefinite matrices as variables. Analogous results hold for Hermitian matrices. Key Words: convexity, matrix function, Schur convexity, Fenchel duality, subdifferential, unitarily invariant, spectral function, positive semidefinite programming, quasi-Newton update. AMS 1991 Subject Classification: Primary 15A45 49N15 Secondary 90C25 65K10 1 Introduction A matrix norm on the n \Theta n complex matrices is called unitarily inv...

A spectral function of a Hermitian matrix X is a function which depends only on the eigenvalues of X , 1 (X) 2 (X) : : : n (X), and hence may be written f( 1 (X); 2 (X); : : : ; n (X)) for some symmetric function f . Such functions appear in a wide variety of matrix optimization problems. We give a simple proof that this spectral function is differentiable at X if and only if the function f is differentiable at the vector (X), and we give a concise formula for the derivative. We then apply this formula to deduce an analogous expression for the Clarke generalized gradient of the spectral function. A similar result holds for real symmetric matrices. 1 Introduction and notation Optimization problems involving a symmetric matrix variable, X say, frequently involve symmetric functions of the eigenvalues of X in the objective or constraints. Examples include the maximum eigenvalue of X, or log(det X) (for positive definite X), or eigenvalue constraints such as positive semidefinit...

'We show that a variety of antenna array pattern synthesis problems can be expressed as convex optimization problems, which can be (numerically) solved with great efficiency by recently developed interior-point methods. The synthesis problems involve arrays with arbitrary geometry and element directivity, constraints on far- and near-field patterns over narrow or broad frequency bandwidth, and some important robustness constraints. We show several numerical simulations for the particular problem of constraining the beampattern level of a simple array for adaptive and broadband arrays.