An Algorithm for Global Maximization of Secrecy Rates in Gaussian MIMO Wiretap Channels

Optimal signaling for secrecy rate maximization in Gaussian MIMO wiretap channels is considered. While this channel has attracted a significant attention recently and a number of results have been obtained, including the proof of the optimality of Gaussian signalling, an optimal transmit covariance matrix is known for some special cases only and the general case remains an open problem. An iterative custom-made algorithm to find a globally-optimal transmit covariance matrix in the general case is developed in this paper, with guaranteed convergence to a \textit{global} optimum. While the original optimization problem is not convex and hence difficult to solve, its minimax reformulation can be solved via the convex optimization tools, which is exploited here. The proposed algorithm is based on the barrier method extended to deal with a minimax problem at hand. Its convergence to a global optimum is proved for the general case (degraded or not) and a bound for the optimality gap is given for each step of the barrier method. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated via numerical examples. In particular, 20 to 40 Newton steps are already sufficient to solve the sufficient optimality conditions with very high precision (up to the machine precision level), even for large systems. Even fewer steps are required if the secrecy capacity is the only quantity of interest. The algorithm can be significantly simplified for the degraded channel case and can also be adopted to include the per-antenna power constraints (instead or in addition to the total power constraint). It also solves the dual problem of minimizing the total power subject to the secrecy rate constraint.Comment: accepted by IEEE Transactions on Communication

On barrier and modified barrier multigrid methods for 3d topology optimization

One of the challenges encountered in optimization of mechanical structures, in particular in what is known as topology optimization, is the size of the problems, which can easily involve millions of variables. A basic example is the minimum compliance formulation of the variable thickness sheet (VTS) problem, which is equivalent to a convex problem. We propose to solve the VTS problem by the Penalty-Barrier Multiplier (PBM) method, introduced by R.\ Polyak and later studied by Ben-Tal and Zibulevsky and others. The most computationally expensive part of the algorithm is the solution of linear systems arising from the Newton method used to minimize a generalized augmented Lagrangian. We use a special structure of the Hessian of this Lagrangian to reduce the size of the linear system and to convert it to a form suitable for a standard multigrid method. This converted system is solved approximately by a multigrid preconditioned MINRES method. The proposed PBM algorithm is compared with the optimality criteria (OC) method and an interior point (IP) method, both using a similar iterative solver setup. We apply all three methods to different loading scenarios. In our experiments, the PBM method clearly outperforms the other methods in terms of computation time required to achieve a certain degree of accuracy

Conic Optimization Theory: Convexification Techniques and Numerical Algorithms

Optimization is at the core of control theory and appears in several areas of this field, such as optimal control, distributed control, system identification, robust control, state estimation, model predictive control and dynamic programming. The recent advances in various topics of modern optimization have also been revamping the area of machine learning. Motivated by the crucial role of optimization theory in the design, analysis, control and operation of real-world systems, this tutorial paper offers a detailed overview of some major advances in this area, namely conic optimization and its emerging applications. First, we discuss the importance of conic optimization in different areas. Then, we explain seminal results on the design of hierarchies of convex relaxations for a wide range of nonconvex problems. Finally, we study different numerical algorithms for large-scale conic optimization problems.Comment: 18 page

A decomposition procedure based on approximate newton directions

The efficient solution of large-scale linear and nonlinear optimization problems may require exploiting any special structure in them in an efficient manner. We describe and analyze some cases in which this special structure can be used with very little cost to obtain search directions from decomposed subproblems. We also study how to correct these directions using (decomposable) preconditioned conjugate gradient methods to ensure local convergence in all cases. The choice of appropriate preconditioners results in a natural manner from the structure in the problem. Finally, we conduct computational experiments to compare the resulting procedures with direct methods, as well as to study the impact of different preconditioner choices

A sequential semidefinite programming method and an application in passive reduced-order modeling

We consider the solution of nonlinear programs with nonlinear semidefiniteness constraints. The need for an efficient exploitation of the cone of positive semidefinite matrices makes the solution of such nonlinear semidefinite programs more complicated than the solution of standard nonlinear programs. In particular, a suitable symmetrization procedure needs to be chosen for the linearization of the complementarity condition. The choice of the symmetrization procedure can be shifted in a very natural way to certain linear semidefinite subproblems, and can thus be reduced to a well-studied problem. The resulting sequential semidefinite programming (SSP) method is a generalization of the well-known SQP method for standard nonlinear programs. We present a sensitivity result for nonlinear semidefinite programs, and then based on this result, we give a self-contained proof of local quadratic convergence of the SSP method. We also describe a class of nonlinear semidefinite programs that arise in passive reduced-order modeling, and we report results of some numerical experiments with the SSP method applied to problems in that class