476 research outputs found
Robust PCA as Bilinear Decomposition with Outlier-Sparsity Regularization
Principal component analysis (PCA) is widely used for dimensionality
reduction, with well-documented merits in various applications involving
high-dimensional data, including computer vision, preference measurement, and
bioinformatics. In this context, the fresh look advocated here permeates
benefits from variable selection and compressive sampling, to robustify PCA
against outliers. A least-trimmed squares estimator of a low-rank bilinear
factor analysis model is shown closely related to that obtained from an
-(pseudo)norm-regularized criterion encouraging sparsity in a matrix
explicitly modeling the outliers. This connection suggests robust PCA schemes
based on convex relaxation, which lead naturally to a family of robust
estimators encompassing Huber's optimal M-class as a special case. Outliers are
identified by tuning a regularization parameter, which amounts to controlling
sparsity of the outlier matrix along the whole robustification path of (group)
least-absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) solutions. Beyond its
neat ties to robust statistics, the developed outlier-aware PCA framework is
versatile to accommodate novel and scalable algorithms to: i) track the
low-rank signal subspace robustly, as new data are acquired in real time; and
ii) determine principal components robustly in (possibly) infinite-dimensional
feature spaces. Synthetic and real data tests corroborate the effectiveness of
the proposed robust PCA schemes, when used to identify aberrant responses in
personality assessment surveys, as well as unveil communities in social
networks, and intruders from video surveillance data.Comment: 30 pages, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin
Learning Price-Elasticity of Smart Consumers in Power Distribution Systems
Demand Response is an emerging technology which will transform the power grid
of tomorrow. It is revolutionary, not only because it will enable peak load
shaving and will add resources to manage large distribution systems, but mainly
because it will tap into an almost unexplored and extremely powerful pool of
resources comprised of many small individual consumers on distribution grids.
However, to utilize these resources effectively, the methods used to engage
these resources must yield accurate and reliable control. A diversity of
methods have been proposed to engage these new resources. As opposed to direct
load control, many methods rely on consumers and/or loads responding to
exogenous signals, typically in the form of energy pricing, originating from
the utility or system operator. Here, we propose an open loop
communication-lite method for estimating the price elasticity of many customers
comprising a distribution system. We utilize a sparse linear regression method
that relies on operator-controlled, inhomogeneous minor price variations, which
will be fair to all the consumers. Our numerical experiments show that reliable
estimation of individual and thus aggregated instantaneous elasticities is
possible. We describe the limits of the reliable reconstruction as functions of
the three key parameters of the system: (i) ratio of the number of
communication slots (time units) per number of engaged consumers; (ii) level of
sparsity (in consumer response); and (iii) signal-to-noise ratio.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, IEEE SmartGridComm 201
Analysis of A Nonsmooth Optimization Approach to Robust Estimation
In this paper, we consider the problem of identifying a linear map from
measurements which are subject to intermittent and arbitarily large errors.
This is a fundamental problem in many estimation-related applications such as
fault detection, state estimation in lossy networks, hybrid system
identification, robust estimation, etc. The problem is hard because it exhibits
some intrinsic combinatorial features. Therefore, obtaining an effective
solution necessitates relaxations that are both solvable at a reasonable cost
and effective in the sense that they can return the true parameter vector. The
current paper discusses a nonsmooth convex optimization approach and provides a
new analysis of its behavior. In particular, it is shown that under appropriate
conditions on the data, an exact estimate can be recovered from data corrupted
by a large (even infinite) number of gross errors.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure
Doubly Robust Smoothing of Dynamical Processes via Outlier Sparsity Constraints
Coping with outliers contaminating dynamical processes is of major importance
in various applications because mismatches from nominal models are not uncommon
in practice. In this context, the present paper develops novel fixed-lag and
fixed-interval smoothing algorithms that are robust to outliers simultaneously
present in the measurements {\it and} in the state dynamics. Outliers are
handled through auxiliary unknown variables that are jointly estimated along
with the state based on the least-squares criterion that is regularized with
the -norm of the outliers in order to effect sparsity control. The
resultant iterative estimators rely on coordinate descent and the alternating
direction method of multipliers, are expressed in closed form per iteration,
and are provably convergent. Additional attractive features of the novel doubly
robust smoother include: i) ability to handle both types of outliers; ii)
universality to unknown nominal noise and outlier distributions; iii)
flexibility to encompass maximum a posteriori optimal estimators with reliable
performance under nominal conditions; and iv) improved performance relative to
competing alternatives at comparable complexity, as corroborated via simulated
tests.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. on Signal Processin
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