arXiv subjects

Ion Necoara

Publications and source records attributed to Ion Necoara.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Stochastic subgradient for composite optimization with functional constraints

In this paper we consider convex optimization problems with stochastic composite objective function subject to (possibly) infinite intersection of constraints. The objective function is expressed in terms of expectation operator over a sum of two terms satisfying a stochastic bounded gradient condition, with or without strong convexity type properties. In contrast to the classical approach, where the constraints are usually represented as intersection of simple sets, in this paper we consider that each constraint set is given as the level set of a convex but not necessarily differentiable function. Based on the flexibility offered by our general optimization model we consider a stochastic subgradient method with random feasibility updates. At each iteration, our algorithm takes a stochastic proximal (sub)gradient step aimed at minimizing the objective function and then a subsequent subgradient step minimizing the feasibility violation of the observed random constraint. We analyze the convergence behavior of the proposed algorithm for diminishing stepsizes and for the case when the objective function is convex or strongly convex, unifying the nonsmooth and smooth cases. We prove sublinear convergence rates for this stochastic subgradient algorithm, which are known to be optimal for subgradient methods on this class of problems. When the objective function has a linear least-square form and the constraints are polyhedral, it is shown that the algorithm converges linearly. Numerical evidence supports the effectiveness of our method in real problems.

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arXiv2024

A stochastic moving ball approximation method for smooth convex constrained minimization

In this paper, we consider constrained optimization problems with convex, smooth objective and constraints. We propose a new stochastic gradient algorithm, called the Stochastic Moving Ball Approximation (SMBA) method, to solve this class of problems, where at each iteration we first take a gradient step for the objective function and then perform a projection step onto one ball approximation of a randomly chosen constraint. The computational simplicity of SMBA, which uses first-order information and considers only one constraint at a time, makes it suitable for large-scale problems with many functional constraints. We provide a convergence analysis for the SMBA algorithm using basic assumptions on the problem, that yields new convergence rates in both optimality and feasibility criteria evaluated at some average point. Our convergence proofs are novel since we need to deal properly with infeasible iterates and with quadratic upper approximations of constraints that may yield empty balls. We derive convergence rates of order $\mathcal{O} (k^{-1/2})$ when the objective function is convex, and $\mathcal{O} (k^{-1})$ when the objective function is strongly convex. Preliminary numerical experiments on quadratically constrained quadratic problems demonstrate the viability and performance of our method when compared to some existing state-of-the-art optimization methods and software.

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arXiv2024

Mini-batch stochastic subgradient for functional constrained optimization

In this paper we consider finite sum composite convex optimization problems with many functional constraints. The objective function is expressed as a finite sum of two terms, one of which admits easy computation of (sub)gradients while the other is amenable to proximal evaluations. We assume a generalized bounded gradient condition on the objective which allows us to simultaneously tackle both smooth and nonsmooth problems. We also consider the cases of both with and without a strong convexity property. Further, we assume that each constraint set is given as the level set of a convex but not necessarily differentiable function. We reformulate the constrained finite sum problem into a stochastic optimization problem for which the stochastic subgradient projection method from [17] specializes to a collection of mini-batch variants, with different mini-batch sizes for the objective function and functional constraints, respectively. More specifically, at each iteration, our algorithm takes a mini-batch stochastic proximal subgradient step aimed at minimizing the objective function and then a subsequent mini-batch subgradient projection step minimizing the feasibility violation. By specializing different mini-batching strategies, we derive exact expressions for the stepsizes as a function of the mini-batch size and in some cases we also derive insightful stepsize-switching rules which describe when one should switch from a constant to a decreasing stepsize regime. We also prove sublinear convergence rates for the mini-batch subgradient projection algorithm which depend explicitly on the mini-batch sizes and on the properties of the objective function. Numerical results also show a better performance of our mini-batch scheme over its single-batch counterpart.

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arXiv2024

Complexity of linearized quadratic penalty for optimization with nonlinear equality constraints

In this paper we consider a nonconvex optimization problem with nonlinear equality constraints. We assume that both, the objective function and the functional constraints, are locally smooth. For solving this problem, we propose a linearized quadratic penalty method, i.e., we linearize the objective function and the functional constraints in the penalty formulation at the current iterate and add a quadratic regularization, thus yielding a subproblem that is easy to solve, and whose solution is the next iterate. Under a new adaptive regularization parameter choice, we provide convergence guarantees for the iterates of this method to an $ε$ first-order optimal solution in $\mathcal{O}({ε^{-2.5}})$ iterations. Finally, we show that when the problem data satisfy Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz property, e.g., are semialgebraic, the whole sequence generated by the proposed algorithm converges and we derive improved local convergence rates depending on the KL parameter. We validate the theory and the performance of the proposed algorithm by numerically comparing it with some existing methods from the literature.

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arXiv2024

Acceleration and restart for the randomized Bregman-Kaczmarz method

Optimizing strongly convex functions subject to linear constraints is a fundamental problem with numerous applications. In this work, we propose a block (accelerated) randomized Bregman-Kaczmarz method that only uses a block of constraints in each iteration to tackle this problem. We consider a dual formulation of this problem in order to deal in an efficient way with the linear constraints. Using convex tools, we show that the corresponding dual function satisfies the Polyak-Lojasiewicz (PL) property, provided that the primal objective function is strongly convex and verifies additionally some other mild assumptions. However, adapting the existing theory on coordinate descent methods to our dual formulation can only give us sublinear convergence results in the dual space. In order to obtain convergence results in some criterion corresponding to the primal (original) problem, we transfer our algorithm to the primal space, which combined with the PL property allows us to get linear convergence rates. More specifically, we provide a theoretical analysis of the convergence of our proposed method under different assumptions on the objective and demonstrate in the numerical experiments its superior efficiency and speed up compared to existing methods for the same problem.

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arXiv2024

Quick unsupervised hyperspectral dimensionality reduction for earth observation: a comparison

Dimensionality reduction can be applied to hyperspectral images so that the most useful data can be extracted and processed more quickly. This is critical in any situation in which data volume exceeds the capacity of the computational resources, particularly in the case of remote sensing platforms (e.g., drones, satellites), but also in the case of multi-year datasets. Moreover, the computational strategies of unsupervised dimensionality reduction often provide the basis for more complicated supervised techniques. Seven unsupervised dimensionality reduction algorithms are tested on hyperspectral data from the HYPSO-1 earth observation satellite. Each particular algorithm is chosen to be representative of a broader collection. The experiments probe the computational complexity, reconstruction accuracy, signal clarity, sensitivity to artifacts, and effects on target detection and classification of the different algorithms. No algorithm consistently outperformed the others across all tests, but some general trends regarding the characteristics of the algorithms did emerge. With half a million pixels, computational time requirements of the methods varied by 5 orders of magnitude, and the reconstruction error varied by about 3 orders of magnitude. A relationship between mutual information and artifact susceptibility was suggested by the tests. The relative performance of the algorithms differed significantly between the target detection and classification tests. Overall, these experiments both show the power of dimensionality reduction and give guidance regarding how to evaluate a technique prior to incorporating it into a processing pipeline.

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arXiv2024

A Comparative Study of Compressive Sensing Algorithms for Hyperspectral Imaging Reconstruction

Hyperspectral Imaging comprises excessive data consequently leading to significant challenges for data processing, storage and transmission. Compressive Sensing has been used in the field of Hyperspectral Imaging as a technique to compress the large amount of data. This work addresses the recovery of hyperspectral images 2.5x compressed. A comparative study in terms of the accuracy and the performance of the convex FISTA/ADMM in addition to the greedy gOMP/BIHT/CoSaMP recovery algorithms is presented. The results indicate that the algorithms recover successfully the compressed data, yet the gOMP algorithm achieves superior accuracy and faster recovery in comparison to the other algorithms at the expense of high dependence on unknown sparsity level of the data to recover.

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arXiv2024

Proximal gradient methods with inexact oracle of degree q for composite optimization

We introduce the concept of inexact first-order oracle of degree q for a possibly nonconvex and nonsmooth function, which naturally appears in the context of approximate gradient, weak level of smoothness and other situations. Our definition is less conservative than those found in the existing literature, and it can be viewed as an interpolation between fully exact and the existing inexact first-order oracle definitions. We analyze the convergence behavior of a (fast) inexact proximal gradient method using such an oracle for solving (non)convex composite minimization problems. We derive complexity estimates and study the dependence between the accuracy of the oracle and the desired accuracy of the gradient or of the objective function. Our results show that better rates can be obtained both theoretically and in numerical simulations when q is large.

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arXiv2024

Higher-order tensor methods for minimizing difference of convex functions

Higher-order tensor methods were recently proposed for minimizing smooth convex and nonconvex functions. Higher-order algorithms accelerate the convergence of the classical first-order methods thanks to the higher-order derivatives used in the updates. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to show that the higher-order algorithmic framework can be generalized and successfully applied to (nonsmooth) difference of convex functions, namely, those that can be expressed as the difference of two smooth convex functions and a possibly nonsmooth convex one. We also provide examples when the subproblem can be solved efficiently, even globally. Secondly, to derive a complete convergence analysis for our higher-order difference of convex functions (HO-DC) algorithm. In particular, we prove that any limit point of the HO-DC iterative sequence is a critical point of the problem under consideration, the corresponding objective value is monotonically decreasing and the minimum value of the norms of its subgradients converges globally to zero at a sublinear rate. The sublinear or linear convergence rates of the iterations are obtained under the Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz property.

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arXiv2024

Exact representation and efficient approximations of linear model predictive control laws via HardTanh type deep neural networks

Deep neural networks have revolutionized many fields, including image processing, inverse problems, text mining and more recently, give very promising results in systems and control. Neural networks with hidden layers have a strong potential as an approximation framework of predictive control laws as they usually yield better approximation quality and smaller memory requirements than existing explicit (multi-parametric) approaches. In this paper, we first show that neural networks with HardTanh activation functions can exactly represent predictive control laws of linear time-invariant systems. We derive theoretical bounds on the minimum number of hidden layers and neurons that a HardTanh neural network should have to exactly represent a given predictive control law. The choice of HardTanh deep neural networks is particularly suited for linear predictive control laws as they usually require less hidden layers and neurons than deep neural networks with ReLU units for representing exactly continuous piecewise affine (or equivalently min-max) maps. In the second part of the paper we bring the physics of the model and standard optimization techniques into the architecture design, in order to eliminate the disadvantages of the black-box HardTanh learning. More specifically, we design trainable unfolded HardTanh deep architectures for learning linear predictive control laws based on two standard iterative optimization algorithms, i.e., projected gradient descent and accelerated projected gradient descent. We also study the performance of the proposed HardTanh type deep neural networks on a linear model predictive control application.

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arXiv2024

Random minibatch subgradient algorithms for convex problems with functional constraints

In this paper we consider non-smooth convex optimization problems with (possibly) infinite intersection of constraints. In contrast to the classical approach, where the constraints are usually represented as intersection of simple sets, which are easy to project onto, in this paper we consider that each constraint set is given as the level set of a convex but not necessarily differentiable function. For these settings we propose subgradient iterative algorithms with random minibatch feasibility updates. At each iteration, our algorithms take a step aimed at only minimizing the objective function and then a subsequent step minimizing the feasibility violation of the observed minibatch of constraints. The feasibility updates are performed based on either parallel or sequential random observations of several constraint components. We analyze the convergence behavior of the proposed algorithms for the case when the objective function is strongly convex and with bounded subgradients, while the functional constraints are endowed with a bounded first-order black-box oracle. For a diminishing stepsize, we prove sublinear convergence rates for the expected distances of the weighted averages of the iterates from the constraint set, as well as for the expected suboptimality of the function values along the weighted averages. Our convergence rates are known to be optimal for subgradient methods on this class of problems. Moreover, the rates depend explicitly on the minibatch size and show when minibatching helps a subgradient scheme with random feasibility updates.

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arXiv2024

Convergence analysis of stochastic higher-order majorization-minimization algorithms

Majorization-minimization schemes are a broad class of iterative methods targeting general optimization problems, including nonconvex, nonsmooth and stochastic. These algorithms minimize successively a sequence of upper bounds of the objective function so that along the iterations the objective value decreases. We present a stochastic higher-order algorithmic framework for minimizing the average of a very large number of sufficiently smooth functions. Our stochastic framework is based on the notion of stochastic higher-order upper bound approximations of the finite-sum objective function and minibatching. We derive convergence results for nonconvex and convex optimization problems when the higher-order approximation of the objective function yields an error that is p times differentiable and has Lipschitz continuous p derivative. More precisely, for general nonconvex problems we present asymptotic stationary point guarantees and under Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz property we derive local convergence rates ranging from sublinear to linear. For convex problems with uniformly convex objective function we derive local (super)linear convergence results for our algorithm. Compared to existing stochastic (first-order) methods, our algorithm adapts to the problem's curvature and allows using any batch size. Preliminary numerical tests support the effectiveness of our algorithmic framework.

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arXiv2024

Coordinate descent methods beyond smoothness and separability

This paper deals with convex nonsmooth optimization problems. We introduce a general smooth approximation framework for the original function and apply random (accelerated) coordinate descent methods for minimizing the corresponding smooth approximations. Our framework covers the most important classes of smoothing techniques from the literature. Based on this general framework for the smooth approximation and using coordinate descent type methods we derive convergence rates in function values for the original objective. Moreover, if the original function satisfies a growth condition, then we prove that the smooth approximations also inherits this condition and consequently the convergence rates are improved in this case. We also present a relative randomized coordinate descent algorithm for solving nonseparable minimization problems with the objective function relative smooth along coordinates w.r.t. a (possibly nonseparable) differentiable function. For this algorithm we also derive convergence rates in the convex case and under the growth condition for the objective.

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arXiv2024

Random coordinate descent methods for nonseparable composite optimization

In this paper we consider large-scale composite optimization problems having the objective function formed as a sum of two terms (possibly nonconvex), one has (block) coordinate-wise Lipschitz continuous gradient and the other is differentiable but nonseparable. Under these general settings we derive and analyze two new coordinate descent methods. The first algorithm, referred to as coordinate proximal gradient method, considers the composite form of the objective function, while the other algorithm disregards the composite form of the objective and uses the partial gradient of the full objective, yielding a coordinate gradient descent scheme with novel adaptive stepsize rules. We prove that these new stepsize rules make the coordinate gradient scheme a descent method, provided that additional assumptions hold for the second term in the objective function. We present a complete worst-case complexity analysis for these two new methods in both, convex and nonconvex settings, provided that the (block) coordinates are chosen random or cyclic. Preliminary numerical results also confirm the efficiency of our two algorithms on practical problems.

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arXiv2021

Model reduction with pole-zero placement and high order moment matching

In this paper, we compute a low order approximation of a system of large order $n$ that matches $ν$ moments of order $j_i$ of the transfer function, at $ν$ interpolation points, has $\ell$ poles and $k$ zeros fixed and also matches $ν-(\ell +k)$ moments of order $j_i+1$, where $j_i+1$ is the multiplicity of the $i$-th interpolation point. We derive explicit linear systems in the free parameters to simultaneously achieve the required pole-zero placement and match the desired high order moments. We compute the closed form of the free parameters that meet the constraints, as the solution of a $ν$ order linear system. Furthermore, for data-driven model reduction, we generalize the construction of the Loewner matrices to include the data and the imposed pole and higher order moment constraints. The resulting approximations achieve a trade-off between the good norm approximation and the preservation of the dynamics of the original system in a region of interest.

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arXiv2020

A Globally Convergent Penalty-Based Gauss-Newton Algorithm with Applications

We propose a globally convergent Gauss-Newton algorithm for finding a local optimal solution of a non-convex and possibly non-smooth optimization problem. The algorithm that we present is based on a Gauss-Newton-type iteration for the non-smooth penalized formulation of the original problem. We establish a global convergence rate for this scheme from any initial point to a stationary point of the problem while using an exact penalty formulation. Under some more restrictive conditions we also derive local quadratic convergence for this scheme. We apply our proposed algorithm to solve the Alternating Current optimal power flow problem on meshed electricity networks, which is a fundamental application in power systems engineering. We verify the performance of the proposed method by showing comparable behavior with IPOPT, a well-established solver. We perform our validation on several representative instances of the optimal power flow problem, which are sourced from the MATPOWER library.

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arXiv2020

General convergence analysis of stochastic first order methods for composite optimization

In this paper we consider stochastic composite convex optimization problems with the objective function satisfying a stochastic bounded gradient condition, with or without a quadratic functional growth property. These models include the most well-known classes of objective functions analyzed in the literature: non-smooth Lipschitz functions and composition of a (potentially) non-smooth function and a smooth function, with or without strong convexity. Based on the flexibility offered by our optimization model we consider several variants of stochastic first order methods, such as the stochastic proximal gradient and the stochastic proximal point algorithms. Usually, the convergence theory for these methods has been derived for simple stochastic optimization models satisfying restrictive assumptions, the rates are in general sublinear and hold only for specific decreasing stepsizes. Hence, we analyze the convergence rates of stochastic first order methods with constant or variable stepsize under general assumptions covering a large class of objective functions. For constant stepsize we show that these methods can achieve linear convergence rate up to a constant proportional to the stepsize and under some strong stochastic bounded gradient condition even pure linear convergence. Moreover, when a variable stepsize is chosen we derive sublinear convergence rates for these stochastic first order methods. Finally, the stochastic gradient mapping and the Moreau smoothing mapping introduced in the present paper lead to simple and intuitive proofs.

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arXiv2020

Composite Convex Optimization with Global and Local Inexact Oracles

We introduce new global and local inexact oracle concepts for a wide class of convex functions in composite convex minimization. Such inexact oracles naturally come from primal-dual framework, barrier smoothing, inexact computations of gradients and Hessian, and many other situations. We also provide examples showing that the class of convex functions equipped with the newly inexact second-order oracles is larger than standard self-concordant as well as Lipschitz gradient function classes. Further, we investigate several properties of convex and/or self-concordant functions under the inexact second-order oracles which are useful for algorithm development. Next, we apply our theory to develop inexact proximal Newton-type schemes for minimizing general composite convex minimization problems equipped with such inexact oracles. Our theoretical results consist of new optimization algorithms, accompanied with global convergence guarantees to solve a wide class of composite convex optimization problems. When the first objective term is additionally self-concordant, we establish different local convergence results for our method. In particular, we prove that depending on the choice of accuracy levels of the inexact second-order oracles, we obtain different local convergence rates ranging from $R$-linear and $R$-superlinear to $R$-quadratic. In special cases, where convergence bounds are known, our theory recovers the best known rates. We also apply our settings to derive a new primal-dual method for composite convex minimization problems. Finally, we present some representative numerical examples to illustrate the benefit of our new algorithms.

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