Reach Set Approximation through Decomposition with Low-dimensional Sets and High-dimensional Matrices

Approximating the set of reachable states of a dynamical system is an algorithmic yet mathematically rigorous way to reason about its safety. Although progress has been made in the development of efficient algorithms for affine dynamical systems, available algorithms still lack scalability to ensure their wide adoption in the industrial setting. While modern linear algebra packages are efficient for matrices with tens of thousands of dimensions, set-based image computations are limited to a few hundred. We propose to decompose reach set computations such that set operations are performed in low dimensions, while matrix operations like exponentiation are carried out in the full dimension. Our method is applicable both in dense- and discrete-time settings. For a set of standard benchmarks, it shows a speed-up of up to two orders of magnitude compared to the respective state-of-the art tools, with only modest losses in accuracy. For the dense-time case, we show an experiment with more than 10.000 variables, roughly two orders of magnitude higher than possible with previous approaches

On computing minimal realizations of periodic descriptor systems

Abstract: We propose computationally efficient and numerically reliable algorithms to compute minimal realizations of periodic descriptor systems. The main computational tool employed for the structural analysis of periodic descriptor systems (i.e., reachability and observability) is the orthogonal reduction of periodic matrix pairs to Kronecker-like forms. Specializations of a general reduction algortithm are employed for particular type of systems. One of the proposed minimal realization transformations for which the backward numerical stability can be proved

Stabilization over power-constrained parallel Gaussian channels

This technical note is concerned with state-feedback stabilization of multi-input systems over parallel Gaussian channels subject to a total power constraint. Both continuous-time and discrete-time systems are treated under the framework of H2 control, and necessary/sufficient conditions for stabilizability are established in terms of inequalities involving unstable plant poles, transmitted power, and noise variances. These results are further used to clarify the relationship between channel capacity and stabilizability. Compared to single-input systems, a range of technical issues arise. In particular, in the multi-input case, the optimal controller has a separation structure, and the lower bound on channel capacity for some discrete-time systems is unachievable by linear time-invariant (LTI) encoders/decoder

Balanced truncation model reduction of periodic systems

The balanced truncation approach to model reduction is considered for linear discrete-time periodic systems with time-varying dimensions. Stability of the reduced model is proved and a guaranteed additive bound is derived for the approximation error. These results represent generalizations of the corresponding ones for standard discrete-time systems. Two numerically reliable methods to compute reduced order models using the balanced truncation approach are considered. The square-root method and the potentially more accurate balancing-free square-root method belong to the family of methods with guaranteed enhanced computational accuracy. The key numerical computation in both methods is the determination of the Cholesky factors of the periodic Gramian matrices by solving nonnegative periodic Lyapunov equations with time-varying dimensions directly for the Cholesky factors of the solutions

Reachability analysis of linear hybrid systems via block decomposition

Reachability analysis aims at identifying states reachable by a system within a given time horizon. This task is known to be computationally expensive for linear hybrid systems. Reachability analysis works by iteratively applying continuous and discrete post operators to compute states reachable according to continuous and discrete dynamics, respectively. In this paper, we enhance both of these operators and make sure that most of the involved computations are performed in low-dimensional state space. In particular, we improve the continuous-post operator by performing computations in high-dimensional state space only for time intervals relevant for the subsequent application of the discrete-post operator. Furthermore, the new discrete-post operator performs low-dimensional computations by leveraging the structure of the guard and assignment of a considered transition. We illustrate the potential of our approach on a number of challenging benchmarks.Comment: Accepted at EMSOFT 202

Computation of Kalman Decompositions of Periodic Systems

We consider the numerically reliable computation of reachability and observability Kalman decompositions of a periodic system with time-varying dimensions. These decompositons generalize the controllability/observability Kalman decompositions for standard state space systems and have immediate applications in the structural analysis of periodic systems. We propose a structure exploiting numerical algorithm to compute the periodic controllability form by employing exclusively orthogonal similarity transformations. The new algorithm is computationally efficient and strongly backward stable, thus fulfils all requirements for a satisfactory algorithm for periodic systems

Encoding inductive invariants as barrier certificates: synthesis via difference-of-convex programming

A barrier certificate often serves as an inductive invariant that isolates an unsafe region from the reachable set of states, and hence is widely used in proving safety of hybrid systems possibly over an infinite time horizon. We present a novel condition on barrier certificates, termed the invariant barrier-certificate condition, that witnesses unbounded-time safety of differential dynamical systems. The proposed condition is the weakest possible one to attain inductive invariance. We show that discharging the invariant barrier-certificate condition -- thereby synthesizing invariant barrier certificates -- can be encoded as solving an optimization problem subject to bilinear matrix inequalities (BMIs). We further propose a synthesis algorithm based on difference-of-convex programming, which approaches a local optimum of the BMI problem via solving a series of convex optimization problems. This algorithm is incorporated in a branch-and-bound framework that searches for the global optimum in a divide-and-conquer fashion. We present a weak completeness result of our method, namely, a barrier certificate is guaranteed to be found (under some mild assumptions) whenever there exists an inductive invariant (in the form of a given template) that suffices to certify safety of the system. Experimental results on benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.Comment: To be published in Inf. Comput. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2105.1431