Optimization Toolbox    

Linear Equality Constraints

The general linear equality constrained minimization problem can be written

    

(3-5)  

where is an m-by-n matrix (). The Optimization Toolbox preprocesses to remove strict linear dependencies using a technique based on the LU-factorization of [6]. Here we will assume is of rank m.

Our method to solve Eq. 3-5 differs from our unconstrained approach in two significant ways. First, an initial feasible point is computed, using a sparse least squares step, so that . Second, Algorithm PCG is replaced with Reduced Preconditioned Conjugate Gradients (RPCG), see [6], in order to compute an approximate reduced Newton step (or a direction of negative curvature in the null space of ). The key linear algebra step involves solving systems of the form

    

(3-6)  

where approximates (small nonzeros of are set to zero provided rank is not lost) and is a sparse symmetric positive-definite approximation to H, i.e., . See [6] for more details.


 Linearly Constrained Problems Box Constraints