Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Convex Optimization Theory

" The greatest watershed in optimization is not between linearity and non linearity , but convexity and non convexity"

The fundamental idea behind the above mentioned claim is that the " local minimum of a convex formulation is the global minimum".  The mathematical proof is available in Stephen Boyd's text book on the optimization theory.

History of Convex Optimization Theory:

 Though the use of the convex optimization in the "Engineering applications" seem to be relatively new, its mathematical treatment is available in  1900 Russian literature. 

Applications of Convex Optimization:

a. System design, analysis and operation.
b. Problems arising in network design and operation, finance, supply chain management, scheduling.
c. Embedded Optimization 

Embedded optimization should be extremely reliable and shall also take predictable amount of time when convex optimization is used.

The challenges in the formulating the convex problems and the conditions for a problem to be convex will be discussed in the later ..... Time for lunch guyzzz....