An LP-based inconsistency monitoring of pairwise comparison matrices

A distance-based inconsistency indicator, defined by the third author for the consistency-driven pairwise comparisons method, is extended to the incomplete case. The corresponding optimization problem is transformed into an equivalent linear programming problem. The results can be applied in the process of filling in the matrix as the decision maker gets automatic feedback. As soon as a serious error occurs among the matrix elements, even due to a misprint, a significant increase in the inconsistency index is reported. The high inconsistency may be alarmed not only at the end of the process of filling in the matrix but also during the completion process. Numerical examples are also provided

A Facial Reduction Approach for the Single Source Localization Problem

The single source localization problem (SSLP) appears in several fields such as signal processing and global positioning systems. The optimization problem of SSLP is nonconvex and difficult to find its globally optima solution. It can be reformulated as a rank constrained Euclidean distance matrix (EDM) completion problem with a number of equality constraints. In this paper, we propose a facial reduction approach to solve such an EDM completion problem. For the constraints of fixed distances between sensors, we reduce them to a face of the EDM cone and derive the closed formulation of the face. We prove constraint nondegeneracy for each feasible point of the resulting EDM optimization problem without a rank constraint, which guarantees the quadratic convergence of semismooth Newton's method. To tackle the nonconvex rank constraint, we apply the majorized penalty approach developed by Zhou et al. (IEEE Trans Signal Process 66(3):4331-4346, 2018). Numerical results verify the fast speed of the proposed approach while giving comparable quality of solutions as other methods