Michael Karow

Nicolas Gillis, Michael Karow, Punit Sharma

In this paper, we consider the problem of stabilizing discrete-time linear systems by computing a nearby stable matrix to an unstable one. To do so, we provide a new characterization for the set of stable matrices. We show that a matrix $A$ is stable if and only if it can be written as $A=S^{-1}UBS$, where $S$ is positive definite, $U$ is orthogonal, and $B$ is a positive semidefinite contraction (that is, the singular values of $B$ are less or equal to 1). This characterization results in an equivalent non-convex optimization problem with a feasible set on which it is easy to project. We propose a very efficient fast projected gradient method to tackle the problem in variables $(S,U,B)$ and generate locally optimal solutions. We show the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to other approaches.

Nicolas Gillis, Michael Karow, Punit Sharma

Consider a discrete-time linear time-invariant descriptor system $Ex(k+1)=Ax(k)$ for $k \in \mathbb Z_{+}$. In this paper, we tackle for the first time the problem of stabilizing such systems by computing a nearby regular index one stable system $\hat E x(k+1)= \hat A x(k)$ with $\text{rank}(\hat E)=r$. We reformulate this highly nonconvex problem into an equivalent optimization problem with a relatively simple feasible set onto which it is easy to project. This allows us to employ a block coordinate descent method to obtain a nearby regular index one stable system. We illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm on several examples.

Michael Karow, Emre Mengi

This work concerns the distance in 2-norm from a matrix polynomial to a nearest polynomial with a specified number of its eigenvalues at specified locations in the complex plane. Perturbations are allowed only on the constant coefficient matrix. Singular value optimization formulas are derived for these distances facilitating their computation. The singular value optimization problems, when the number of specified eigenvalues is small, can be solved numerically by exploiting the Lipschitzness and piece-wise analyticity of the singular values with respect to the parameters.