A novel dual-decomposition method based on p-Lagrangian relaxation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the novel p-branch-and-bound method for solving two-stage stochastic programming problems whose deterministic equivalents are represented by mixed-integer quadratically constrained quadratic programming (MIQCQP) models. The precision of the solution generated by the p-branch-and-bound method can be arbitrarily adjusted by altering the value of the precision factor p. The proposed method combines two key techniques. The first one, named p-Lagrangian decomposition, generates a mixed-integer relaxation of a dual problem with a separable structure for a primal MIQCQP problem. The second one is a version of the classical dual decomposition approach that is applied to solve the Lagrangian dual problem and ensures that integrality and non-anticipativity conditions are met in the optimal solution. The p-branch-and-bound method’s efficiency has been tested on randomly generated instances and demonstrated superior performance over commercial solver Gurobi. This paper also presents a comparative analysis of the p-branch-and-bound method efficiency considering two alternative solution methods for the dual problems as a subroutine. These are the proximal bundle method and Frank-Wolfe progressive hedging. The latter algorithm relies on the interpolation of linearisation steps similar to those taken in the Frank-Wolfe method as an inner loop in the classic progressive heading.

Nikita Belyak

Postdoctoral Researcher

Nikita Belyak is a Doctoral Candidate at the department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis of Aalto University.

Fabricio Oliveira

Associate Professor of Operational Research

Fabricio Oliveira is an Associate Professor of Operational Research in the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis.