arXiv subjects

Bican Xia

Publications and source records attributed to Bican Xia.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

A New Sparse SOS Decomposition Algorithm Based on Term Sparsity

A new sparse SOS decomposition algorithm is proposed based on a new sparsity pattern, called cross sparsity patterns. The new sparsity pattern focuses on the sparsity of terms and thus is different from the well-known correlative sparsity pattern which focuses on the sparsity of variables though the sparse SOS decomposition algorithms based on these two sparsity patterns both take use of chordal extensions/chordal decompositions. Moreover, it is proved that the SOS decomposition obtained by the new sparsity pattern is always a refinement of the block-diagonalization obtained by the sign-symmetry method. %Because the new sparsity pattern covers more sparse polynomials than correlative sparsity pattern, Various experiments show that the new algorithm dramatically saves the computational cost compared to existing tools and can handle some really huge polynomials.

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arXiv2018

Parameter Synthesis Problems for one parametric clock Timed Automata

In this paper, we study the parameter synthesis problem for a class of parametric timed automata. The problem asks to construct the set of valuations of the parameters in the parametric timed automa- ton, referred to as the feasible region, under which the resulting timed automaton satisfies certain properties. We show that the parameter syn- thesis problem of parametric timed automata with only one parametric clock (unlimited concretely constrained clock) and arbitrarily many pa- rameters is solvable when all the expressions are linear expressions. And it is moreover the synthesis problem is solvable when the form of con- straints are parameter polynomial inequality not just simple constraint and parameter domain is nonnegative real number.

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arXiv2018

Block SOS Decomposition

A widely used method for solving SOS (Sum Of Squares) decomposition problem is to reduce it to the problem of semi-definite programs (SDPs) which can be efficiently solved in theory. In practice, although many SDP solvers can work out some problems of big scale, the efficiency and reliability of such method decrease greatly while the input size increases. Recently, by exploiting the sparsity of the input SOS decomposition problem, some preprocessing algorithms were proposed [5,17], which first divide the input problem satisfying special definitions or properties into smaller SDP problems and then pass the smaller ones to SDP solvers to obtain reliable results efficiently. A natural question is that to what extent the above mentioned preprocessing algorithms work. That is, how many polynomials satisfying those definitions or properties are there in the SOS polynomials? In this paper, we define a concept of block SOS decomposable polynomials which is a generalization of those special classes in [5] and [17]. Roughly speaking, it is a class of polynomials whose SOS decomposition problem can be transformed into smaller ones (in other words, the corresponding SDP matrices can be block-diagnolized) by considering their supports only (coefficients are not considered). Then we prove that the set of block SOS decomposable polynomials has measure zero in the set of SOS polynomials. That means if we only consider supports (not with coefficients) of polynomials, such algorithms decreasing the size of SDPs for those SDP-based SOS solvers can only work on very few polynomials. As a result, this shows that the SOS decomposition problems that can be optimized by the above mentioned preprocessing algorithms are very few.

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arXiv2017

Finding polynomial loop invariants for probabilistic programs

Quantitative loop invariants are an essential element in the verification of probabilistic programs. Recently, multivariate Lagrange interpolation has been applied to synthesizing polynomial invariants. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach. First, we fix a polynomial template as a candidate of a loop invariant. Using Stengle's Positivstellensatz and a transformation to a sum-of-squares problem, we find sufficient conditions on the coefficients. Then, we solve a semidefinite programming feasibility problem to synthesize the loop invariants. If the semidefinite program is unfeasible, we backtrack after increasing the degree of the template. Our approach is semi-complete in the sense that it will always lead us to a feasible solution if one exists and numerical errors are small. Experimental results show the efficiency of our approach.

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arXiv2017

A Special Homotopy Continuation Method For A Class of Polynomial Systems

A special homotopy continuation method, as a combination of the polyhedral homotopy and the linear product homotopy, is proposed for computing all the isolated solutions to a special class of polynomial systems. The root number bound of this method is between the total degree bound and the mixed volume bound and can be easily computed. The new algorithm has been implemented as a program called LPH using C++. Our experiments show its efficiency compared to the polyhedral or other homotopies on such systems. As an application, the algorithm can be used to find witness points on each connected component of a real variety.

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arXiv2016

Interpolation synthesis for quadratic polynomial inequalities and combination with EUF

An algorithm for generating interpolants for formulas which are conjunctions of quadratic polynomial inequalities (both strict and nonstrict) is proposed. The algorithm is based on a key observation that quadratic polynomial inequalities can be linearized if they are concave. A generalization of Motzkin's transposition theorem is proved, which is used to generate an interpolant between two mutually contradictory conjunctions of polynomial inequalities, using semi-definite programming in time complexity $\mathcal{O}(n^3+nm))$, where $n$ is the number of variables and $m$ is the number of inequalities. Using the framework proposed by \cite{SSLMCS2008} for combining interpolants for a combination of quantifier-free theories which have their own interpolation algorithms, a combination algorithm is given for the combined theory of concave quadratic polynomial inequalities and the equality theory over uninterpreted functions symbols (\textit{EUF}). The proposed approach is applicable to all existing abstract domains like \emph{octagon}, \emph{polyhedra}, \emph{ellipsoid} and so on, therefore it can be used to improve the scalability of existing verification techniques for programs and hybrid systems. In addition, we also discuss how to extend our approach to formulas beyond concave quadratic polynomials using Gröbner basis.

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arXiv2015

Smaller SDP for SOS Decomposition

A popular numerical method to compute SOS (sum of squares of polynomials) decompositions for polynomials is to transform the problem into semi-definite programming (SDP) problems and then solve them by SDP solvers. In this paper, we focus on reducing the sizes of inputs to SDP solvers to improve the efficiency and reliability of those SDP based methods. Two types of polynomials, convex cover polynomials and split polynomials, are defined. A convex cover polynomial or a split polynomial can be decomposed into several smaller sub-polynomials such that the original polynomial is SOS if and only if the sub-polynomials are all SOS. Thus the original SOS problem can be decomposed equivalently into smaller sub-problems. It is proved that convex cover polynomials are split polynomials and it is quite possible that sparse polynomials with many variables are split polynomials, which can be efficiently detected in practice. Some necessary conditions for polynomials to be SOS are also given, which can help refute quickly those polynomials which have no SOS representations so that SDP solvers are not called in this case. All the new results lead to a new SDP based method to compute SOS decompositions, which improves this kind of methods by passing smaller inputs to SDP solvers in some cases. Experiments show that the number of monomials obtained by our program is often smaller than that by other SDP based software, especially for polynomials with many variables and high degrees. Numerical results on various tests are reported to show the performance of our program.

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arXiv2014

Hierarchical Comprehensive Triangular Decomposition

The concept of comprehensive triangular decomposition (CTD) was first introduced by Chen et al. in their CASC'2007 paper and could be viewed as an analogue of comprehensive Grobner systems for parametric polynomial systems. The first complete algorithm for computing CTD was also proposed in that paper and implemented in the RegularChains library in Maple. Following our previous work on generic regular decomposition for parametric polynomial systems, we introduce in this paper a so-called hierarchical strategy for computing CTDs. Roughly speaking, for a given parametric system, the parametric space is divided into several sub-spaces of different dimensions and we compute CTDs over those sub-spaces one by one. So, it is possible that, for some benchmarks, it is difficult to compute CTDs in reasonable time while this strategy can obtain some "partial" solutions over some parametric sub-spaces. The program based on this strategy has been tested on a number of benchmarks from the literature. Experimental results on these benchmarks with comparison to RegularChains are reported and may be valuable for developing more efficient triangularization tools.

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arXiv2014

Constructing Fewer Open Cells by GCD Computation in CAD Projection

A new projection operator based on cylindrical algebraic decomposition (CAD) is proposed. The new operator computes the intersection of projection factor sets produced by different CAD projection orders. In other words, it computes the gcd of projection polynomials in the same variables produced by different CAD projection orders. We prove that the new operator still guarantees obtaining at least one sample point from every connected component of the highest dimension, and therefore, can be used for testing semi-definiteness of polynomials. Although the complexity of the new method is still doubly exponential, in many cases, the new operator does produce smaller projection factor sets and fewer open cells. Some examples of testing semi-definiteness of polynomials, which are difficult to be solved by existing tools, have been worked out efficiently by our program based on the new method.

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arXiv2013

Special Algorithm for Stability Analysis of Multistable Biological Regulatory Systems

We consider the problem of counting (stable) equilibriums of an important family of algebraic differential equations modeling multistable biological regulatory systems. The problem can be solved, in principle, using real quantifier elimination algorithms, in particular real root classification algorithms. However, it is well known that they can handle only very small cases due to the enormous computing time requirements. In this paper, we present a special algorithm which is much more efficient than the general methods. Its efficiency comes from the exploitation of certain interesting structures of the family of differential equations.

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arXiv2013

Barrier Certificates Revisited

A barrier certificate can separate the state space of a con- sidered hybrid system (HS) into safe and unsafe parts ac- cording to the safety property to be verified. Therefore this notion has been widely used in the verification of HSs. A stronger condition on barrier certificates means that less expressive barrier certificates can be synthesized. On the other hand, synthesizing more expressive barrier certificates often means high complexity. In [9], Kong et al consid- ered how to relax the condition of barrier certificates while still keeping their convexity so that one can synthesize more expressive barrier certificates efficiently using semi-definite programming (SDP). In this paper, we first discuss how to relax the condition of barrier certificates in a general way, while still keeping their convexity. Particularly, one can then utilize different weaker conditions flexibly to synthesize dif- ferent kinds of barrier certificates with more expressiveness efficiently using SDP. These barriers give more opportuni- ties to verify the considered system. We also show how to combine two functions together to form a combined barrier certificate in order to prove a safety property under consid- eration, whereas neither of them can be used as a barrier certificate separately, even according to any relaxed condi- tion. Another contribution of this paper is that we discuss how to discover certificates from the general relaxed condi- tion by SDP. In particular, we focus on how to avoid the unsoundness because of numeric error caused by SDP with symbolic checking

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arXiv2013

Proving Inequalities and Solving Global Optimization Problems via Simplified CAD Projection

Let $\xx_n=(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$ and $f\in \R[\xx_n,k]$. The problem of finding all $k_0$ such that $f(\xx_n,k_0)\ge 0$ on $\mathbb{R}^n$ is considered in this paper, which obviously takes as a special case the problem of computing the global infimum or proving the semi-definiteness of a polynomial. For solving the problems, we propose a simplified Brown's CAD projection operator, \Nproj, of which the projection scale is always no larger than that of Brown's. For many problems, the scale is much smaller than that of Brown's. As a result, the lifting phase is also simplified. Some new algorithms based on \Nproj\ for solving those problems are designed and proved to be correct. Comparison to some existing tools on some examples is reported to illustrate the effectiveness of our new algorithms.

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arXiv2013

Deciding Nonnegativity of Polynomials by MAPLE

There have been some effective tools for solving (constant/parametric) semi-algebraic systems in Maple's library RegularChains since Maple 13. By using the functions of the library, e.g., RealRootClassfication, one can prove and discover polynomial inequalities. This paper is more or less a user guide on using RealRootClassfication to prove the nonnegativity of polynomials. We show by examples how to use this powerful tool to prove a polynomial is nonnegative under some polynomial inequality and/or equation constraints. Some tricks for using the tool are also provided.

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arXiv2013

Generating Non-Linear Interpolants by Semidefinite Programming

Interpolation-based techniques have been widely and successfully applied in the verification of hardware and software, e.g., in bounded-model check- ing, CEGAR, SMT, etc., whose hardest part is how to synthesize interpolants. Various work for discovering interpolants for propositional logic, quantifier-free fragments of first-order theories and their combinations have been proposed. However, little work focuses on discovering polynomial interpolants in the literature. In this paper, we provide an approach for constructing non-linear interpolants based on semidefinite programming, and show how to apply such results to the verification of programs by examples.

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arXiv2013

Generic Regular Decompositions for Parametric Polynomial Systems

This paper presents a generalization of our earlier work in [19]. In this paper, the two concepts, generic regular decomposition (GRD) and regular-decomposition-unstable (RDU) variety introduced in [19] for generic zero-dimensional systems, are extended to the case where the parametric systems are not necessarily zero-dimensional. An algorithm is provided to compute GRDs and the associated RDU varieties of parametric systems simultaneously on the basis of the algorithm for generic zero-dimensional systems proposed in [19]. Then the solutions of any parametric system can be represented by the solutions of finitely many regular systems and the decomposition is stable at any parameter value in the complement of the associated RDU variety of the parameter space. The related definitions and the results presented in [19] are also generalized and a further discussion on RDU varieties is given from an experimental point of view. The new algorithm has been implemented on the basis of DISCOVERER with Maple 16 and experimented with a number of benchmarks from the literature.

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arXiv2013

Generic Regular Decompositions for Generic Zero-Dimensional Systems

Two new concepts, generic regular decomposition and regular-decomposition-unstable (RDU) variety for generic zero-dimensional systems, are introduced in this paper and an algorithm is proposed for computing a generic regular decomposition and the associated RDU variety of a given generic zero-dimensional system simultaneously. The solutions of the given system can be expressed by finitely many zero-dimensional regular chains if the parameter value is not on the RDU variety. The so called weakly relatively simplicial decomposition plays a crucial role in the algorithm, which is based on the theories of subresultant chains. Furthermore, the algorithm can be naturally adopted to compute a non-redundant Wu's decomposition and the decomposition is stable at any parameter value that is not on the RDU variety. The algorithm has been implemented with Maple 15 and experimented with a number of benchmarks from the literature. Empirical results are also presented to show the good performance of the algorithm.

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arXiv2012

Real Root Isolation of Polynomial Equations Based on Hybrid Computation

A new algorithm for real root isolation of polynomial equations based on hybrid computation is presented in this paper. Firstly, the approximate (complex) zeros of the given polynomial equations are obtained via homotopy continuation method. Then, for each approximate zero, an initial box relying on the Kantorovich theorem is constructed, which contains the corresponding accurate zero. Finally, the Krawczyk interval iteration with interval arithmetic is applied to the initial boxes so as to check whether or not the corresponding approximate zeros are real and to obtain the real root isolation boxes. Meanwhile, an empirical construction of initial box is provided for higher performance. Our experiments on many benchmarks show that the new hybrid method is more efficient, compared with the traditional symbolic approaches.

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arXiv2012

logcf: An Efficient Tool for Real Root Isolation

This paper revisits an algorithm for isolating real roots of univariate polynomials based on continued fractions. It follows the work of Vincent, Uspen- sky, Collins and Akritas, Johnson and Krandick. We use some tricks, especially a new algorithm for computing an upper bound of positive roots. In this way, the algorithm of isolating real roots is improved. The complexity of our method for computing an upper bound of positive roots is O(n log(u+1)) where u is the optimal upper bound satisfying Theorem 3 and n is the degree of the polynomial. Our method has been implemented as a software package logcf using C++ language. For many benchmarks logcf is two or three times faster than the function RootIntervals of Mathematica. And it is much faster than another continued fractions based software CF, which seems to be one of the fastest available open software for exact real root isolation. For those benchmarks which have only real roots, logcf is much faster than Sleeve and eigensolve which are based on numerical computation.

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