A passivation algorithm for linear time-invariant systems

10/29/2020

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by   Antonio Fazzi, et al.

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Vrije Universiteit Brussel

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GranSassoScienceInst

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Universität Tübingen

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We propose and study an algorithm for computing a nearest passive system to a given non-passive linear time-invariant system (with much freedom in the choice of the metric defining `nearest'), and also a closely related algorithm for computing the structured distance of a given passive system to non-passivity. Both problems are addressed by solving eigenvalue optimization problems for Hamiltonian matrices that are constructed from perturbed system matrices. The proposed algorithms are two-level methods that optimize the Hamiltonian eigenvalue of smallest positive real part over perturbations of a fixed size in the inner iteration, using a constrained gradient flow, and optimize over the perturbation size in the outer iteration. For large systems, we propose a variant of the algorithm that takes advantage of the inherent low-rank structure of the problem. Numerical experiments illustrate the behavior of the proposed algorithms.