Publications

By a well known theorem of Robbins, a graph G has a strongly connected orientation if and only if G is 2-edge-connected and it is easy to find, in linear time, either a cut edge of G or a strong orientation of G. A result of Durand de Gevigney shows that for every it is NP-hard to decide if a given graph G has a k-strong orientation. Thomassen showed that one can check in polynomial time whether a given graph has a 2-strong orientation. This implies that for a given digraph D we can determine in polynomial time whether we can reorient (=reverse) some arcs of to obtain a 2-strong digraph. This naturally leads to the question of determining the minimum number of such arcs to reverse before the resulting graph is 2-strong. In this paper we show that finding this number is NP-hard. If a 2-connected graph G has no 2-strong orientation, we may ask how many of its edges we may orient so that the resulting mixed graph is still 2-strong. Similarly, we may ask for a 2-edge-connected graph G how many of its edges we can orient such that the resulting mixed graph remains 2-arc-strong. We prove that when restricted to graphs satisfying suitable connectivity conditions, both of these problems are equivalent to finding the minimum number of edges we must double in a 2-edge-connected graph in order to obtain a 4-edge-connected graph. Using this, we show that all these three problems are NP-hard. Finally, we consider the operation of deorienting an arc uv of a digraph D meaning replacing it by an undirected edge between the same vertices. In terms of connectivity properties, this is equivalent to adding the opposite arc vu to D. We prove that for every it is NP-hard to find the minimum number of arcs to deorient in a digraph D in order to obtain an ℓ-strong digraph.

We address the feedback design problem for switched linear systems. In particular we aim to design a switched state-feedback such that the resulting closed-loop switched system is in upper triangular form. To this effect we formulate and analyse the feedback rectification problem for pairs of matrices. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for the feedback rectifiability of pairs for two subsystems and give a constructive procedure to design stabilizing state-feedback for a class of switched systems. Several examples illustrate the characteristics of the problem considered and the application of the proposed constructive procedure.

Application problems can often not be solved adequately by numerical algorithms as several difficulties might arise at the same time. When developing and improving algorithms which hopefully allow to handle those difficulties in the future, good test instances are required. These can then be used to detect the strengths and weaknesses of different algorithmic approaches. In this paper we present a generator for test instances to evaluate solvers for multiobjective mixed-integer linear and nonlinear optimization problems. Based on test instances for purely continuous and purely integer problems with known efficient solutions and known nondominated points, suitable multiobjective mixed-integer test instances can be generated. The special structure allows to construct instances scalable in the number of variables and objective functions. Moreover, it allows to control the resulting efficient and nondominated sets as well as the number of efficient integer assignments.

The fundamental lemma by Jan C. Willems and co-workers is deeply rooted in behavioral systems theory and it has become one of the supporting pillars of the recent progress on data-driven control and system analysis. This tutorial-style paper combines recent insights into stochastic and descriptor-system formulations of the lemma to further extend and broaden the formal basis for behavioral theory of stochastic linear systems. We show that series expansions - in particular Polynomial Chaos Expansions (PCE) of L2-random variables, which date back to Norbert Wiener’s seminal work - enable equivalent behavioral characterizations of linear stochastic systems. Specifically, we prove that under mild assumptions the behavior of the dynamics of the L2-random variables is equivalent to the behavior of the dynamics of the series expansion coefficients and that it entails the behavior composed of sampled realization trajectories. We also illustrate the short-comings of the behavior associated to the time-evolution of the statistical moments. The paper culminates in the formulation of the stochastic fundamental lemma for linear time-invariant systems, which in turn enables numerically tractable formulations of data-driven stochastic optimal control combining Hankel matrices in realization data (i.e. in measurements) with PCE concepts.

In this paper, we study a quasilinear coupled magneto-quasistatic model from a systems theoretic perspective. First, by taking the injected voltages as input and the associated currents as output, we prove that the magneto-quasistatic system is passive. Moreover, by defining suitable Dirac and resistive structures, we show that it admits a representation as a port-Hamiltonian system. Thereafter, we consider dependence of the solution on initial and input data. We show that the current and the magnetic vector potential can be estimated by means of the initial magnetic vector potential and the voltage. We also analyse the free dynamics of the system and study the asymptotic behavior of the solutions for $ t\to\infty $.