Motivated by emerging applications in wireless sensor networks and large-scale data processing, we consider distributed optimization over directed networks where the agents communicate their information locally to their neighbors to cooperatively minimize a global cost function. We introduce a new unifying distributed constrained optimization model that is characterized as a bilevel optimization problem. This model captures a wide range of existing problems over directed networks including: (i) Distributed optimization with linear constraints; (ii) Distributed unconstrained nonstrongly convex optimization over directed networks. Employing a novel regularization-based relaxation approach and gradient-tracking schemes, we develop an iteratively regularized push-pull gradient algorithm. We establish the consensus and derive new convergence rate statements for suboptimality and infeasibility of the generated iterates for solving the bilevel model. The proposed algorithm and the complexity analysis obtained in this work appear to be new for addressing the bilevel model and also for the two sub-classes of problems. The numerical performance of the proposed algorithm is presented.
Total Generalized Variation (TGV) regularization in image reconstruction relies on an infimal convolution type combination of generalized first- and second-order derivatives. This helps to avoid the staircasing effect of Total Variation (TV) regularization, while still preserving sharp contrasts in images. The associated regularization effect crucially hinges on two parameters whose proper adjustment represents a challenging task. In this work, a bilevel optimization framework with a suitable statistics-based upper level objective is proposed in order to automatically select these parameters. …
Tongji University（同济大学）；University of Connecticut（康涅狄格大学）
Bilevel optimization plays an essential role in many machine learning tasks, ranging from hyperparameter optimization to meta-learning. Existing studies on bilevel optimization, however, focus on either centralized or synchronous distributed setting. The centralized bilevel optimization approaches require collecting massive amount of data to a single server, which inevitably incur significant communication expenses and may give rise to data privacy risks. Synchronous distributed bilevel optimization algorithms, on the other hand, often face the straggler problem and will immediately stop worki…
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学）
Bilevel optimization is a popular hierarchical model in machine learning, and has been widely applied to many machine learning tasks such as meta learning, hyperparameter learning and policy optimization. Although many bilevel optimization algorithms recently have been developed, few adaptive algorithm focuses on the bilevel optimization under the distributed setting. It is well known that the adaptive gradient methods show superior performances on both distributed and non-distributed optimization. In the paper, thus, we propose a novel adaptive federated bilevel optimization algorithm (i.e.,A…
Bilevel Optimization has witnessed notable progress recently with new emerging efficient algorithms and has been applied to many machine learning tasks such as data cleaning, few-shot learning, and neural architecture search. However, little attention has been paid to solve the bilevel problems under distributed setting. Federated learning (FL) is an emerging paradigm which solves machine learning tasks over distributed-located data. FL problems are challenging to solve due to the heterogeneity and communication bottleneck. However, it is unclear how these challenges will affect the convergenc…
Bilevel optimization have gained growing interests, with numerous applications found in meta learning, minimax games, reinforcement learning, and nested composition optimization. This paper studies the problem of distributed bilevel optimization over a network where agents can only communicate with neighbors, including examples from multi-task, multi-agent learning and federated learning. In this paper, we propose a gossip-based distributed bilevel learning algorithm that allows networked agents to solve both the inner and outer optimization problems in a single timescale and share information…
University at Buffalo（纽约州立大学布法罗分校）；University of Michigan, Ann Arbor（密歇根大学安娜堡分校）
Fair resource allocation is one of the most important topics in communication networks. Existing solutions almost exclusively assume each user utility function is known and concave. This paper seeks to answer the following question: how to allocate resources when utility functions are unknown, even to the users? This answer has become increasingly important in the next-generation AI-aware communication networks where the user utilities are complex and their closed-forms are hard to obtain. In this paper, we provide a new solution using a distributed and data-driven bilevel optimization approac…
We study a class of bilevel convex optimization problems where the goal is to find the minimizer of an objective function in the upper level, among the set of all optimal solutions of an optimization problem in the lower level. A wide range of problems in convex optimization can be formulated using this class. An important example is the case where an optimization problem is ill-posed. In this paper, our interest lies in addressing the bilevel problems, where the lower level objective is given as a finite sum of separate nondifferentiable convex component functions. This is the case in a varie…
This work builds on our recent work on a distributed optimization algorithm for graphs with directed unreliable communications. We show its linear convergence when we take either the proximal of each function or an affine minorant for when the function is smooth.
We show that the averaged consensus algorithm on directed graphs with unreliable communications by Bof-Carli-Schenato has a dual optimization interpretation, which could be extended to the case of distributed optimization. We report on our numerical simulations for the distributed optimization algorithm for smooth and nonsmooth functions.
We propose a distributed algorithm, termed the Directed-Distributed Projected Subgradient (D-DPS), to solve a constrained optimization problem over a multi-agent network, where the goal of agents is to collectively minimize the sum of locally known convex functions. Each agent in the network owns only its local objective function, constrained to a commonly known convex set. We focus on the circumstance when communications between agents are described by a directed network. The D-DPS augments an additional variable for each agent, to overcome the asymmetry caused by the directed communication n…
Communication efficiency is a major bottleneck in the applications of distributed networks. To address the problem, the problem of quantized distributed optimization has attracted a lot of attention. However, most of the existing quantized distributed optimization algorithms can only converge sublinearly. To achieve linear convergence, this paper proposes a novel quantized distributed gradient tracking algorithm (Q-DGT) to minimize a finite sum of local objective functions over directed networks. Moreover, we explicitly derive the update rule for the number of quantization levels, and prove th…
This paper considers the cooperative output regulation problem for linear multi-agent systems with a directed communication graph, heterogeneous linear subsystems, and an exosystem whose output is available to only a subset of subsystems. Both the cases with nominal and uncertain linear subsystems are studied. For the case with nominal linear subsystems, a distributed adaptive observer-based controller is designed, where the distributed adaptive observer is implemented for the subsystems to estimate the exogenous signal. For the case with uncertain linear subsystems, the proposed distributed o…
This paper considers a distributed convex optimization problem over a time-varying multi-agent network, where each agent has its own decision variables that should be set so as to minimize its individual objective subject to local constraints and global coupling equality constraints. Over directed graphs, a distributed algorithm is proposed that incorporates the push-sum protocol into dual subgradient methods. Under the convexity assumption, the optimality of primal and dual variables, and constraint violations is first established. Then the explicit convergence rates of the proposed algorithm…
In this paper, we consider distributed optimization problems where the goal is to minimize a sum of objective functions over a multi-agent network. We focus on the case when the inter-agent communication is described by a strongly-connected, \emph{directed} graph. The proposed algorithm, ADD-OPT (Accelerated Distributed Directed Optimization), achieves the best known convergence rate for this class of problems,~$O(μ^{k}),0<μ<1$, given strongly-convex, objective functions with globally Lipschitz-continuous gradients, where~$k$ is the number of iterations. Moreover, ADD-OPT supports a wider and …
We consider a multi agent optimization problem where a set of agents collectively solves a global optimization problem with the objective function given by the sum of locally known convex functions. We focus on the case when information exchange among agents takes place over a directed network and propose a distributed subgradient algorithm in which each agent performs local processing based on information obtained from his incoming neighbors. Our algorithm uses weight balancing to overcome the asymmetries caused by the directed communication network, i.e., agents scale their outgoing informat…
In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm, called Directed-Distributed Gradient Descent (D-DGD), to solve multi-agent optimization problems over directed graphs. Existing algorithms mostly deal with similar problems under the assumption of undirected networks, i.e., requiring the weight matrices to be doubly-stochastic. The row-stochasticity of the weight matrix guarantees that all agents reach consensus, while the column-stochasticity ensures that each agent's local gradient contributes equally to the global objective. In a directed graph, however, it may not be possible to construct …
With the growing attention towards developing the multimodal transport system to enhance urban mobility, there is an increasing need to construct new, rebuild or expand existing infrastructure to facilitate existing and accommodate newly generated travel demand. Therefore, this paper develops a bilevel model to simultaneously determine the location and capacity of the transfer infrastructure to be built considering elastic demand in a multimodal transport network. The upper level problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem, while the lower level problem is the capacitat…
We propose Directed-Distributed Projected Subgradient (D-DPS) to solve a constrained optimization problem over a multi-agent network, where the goal of agents is to collectively minimize the sum of locally known convex functions. Each agent in the network owns only its local objective function, constrained to a commonly known convex set. We focus on the circumstance when communications between agents are described by a \emph{directed} network. The D-DPS combines surplus consensus to overcome the asymmetry caused by the directed communication network. The analysis shows the convergence rate to …
We study the distributed stochastic compositional optimization problems over directed communication networks in which agents privately own a stochastic compositional objective function and collaborate to minimize the sum of all objective functions. We propose a distributed stochastic compositional gradient descent method, where the gradient tracking and the stochastic correction techniques are employed to adapt to the networks' directed structure and increase the accuracy of inner function estimation. When the objective function is smooth, the proposed method achieves the convergence rate $\ma…
This paper develops a fast distributed algorithm, termed \emph{DEXTRA}, to solve the optimization problem when~$n$ agents reach agreement and collaboratively minimize the sum of their local objective functions over the network, where the communication between the agents is described by a~\emph{directed} graph. Existing algorithms solve the problem restricted to directed graphs with convergence rates of $O(\ln k/\sqrt{k})$ for general convex objective functions and $O(\ln k/k)$ when the objective functions are strongly-convex, where~$k$ is the number of iterations. We show that, with the approp…
This paper investigates the distributed continuous-time nonconvex optimization problem over unbalanced directed networks. The objective is to cooperatively drive all the agent states to an optimal solution that minimizes the sum of the local cost functions. Based on the topology balancing technique and adaptive control approach, a novel fully distributed algorithm is developed for each agent with neither prior global information concerning network connectivity nor convexity of local cost functions. By viewing the proposed algorithm as a perturbed system, its input-to-state stability with a van…
This paper explores distributed Nash equilibrium seeking problems for games in which the players have limited knowledge on other players' actions. In particular, the involved players are considered to be high-order integrators with their control inputs constrained within a pre-specified region. A linear transformation for the players' dynamics is firstly utilized to facilitate the design of bounded control inputs incorporating multiple saturation functions. By introducing consensus protocols with adaptive and time-varying gains, the unknown actions for players are distributively estimated. The…
In this paper, we aim to develop distributed continuous-time algorithms over directed graphs to seek the Nash equilibrium in a noncooperative game. Motivated by the recent consensus-based designs, we present a distributed algorithm with a proportional gain for weight-balanced directed graphs. By further embedding a distributed estimator of the left eigenvector associated with zero eigenvalue of the graph Laplacian, we extend it to the case with arbitrary strongly connected directed graphs having possible unbalanced weights. In both cases, the Nash equilibrium is proven to be exactly reached wi…
In this paper, we propose a framework under which the decentralized optimization algorithms suggested in \cite{JKJJ,MA, NO,NO2} can be treated in a unified manner. More precisely, we show that the distributed subgradient descent algorithms \cite{JKJJ, NO}, the subgradient-push algorithm \cite{NO2}, and the distributed algorithm with row-stochastic matrix \cite{MA} can be derived by making suitable choices of consensus matrices, step-size and subgradient from the decentralized subgradient descent proposed in \cite{NO}. As a result of such unified understanding, we provide a convergence proof th…
In this paper, two distributed multi-proximal primal-dual algorithms are proposed to deal with a class of distributed nonsmooth resource allocation problems. In these problems, the global cost function is the summation of local convex and nonsmooth cost functions, each of which consists of one twice differentiable function and multiple nonsmooth functions. Communication graphs of underling multi-agent systems are directed and strongly connected but not necessarily weighted-balanced. The multi-proximal splitting is designed to deal with the difficulty caused by the unproximable property of the …
We consider a bilevel continuous knapsack problem where the leader controls the capacity of the knapsack, while the follower chooses a feasible packing maximizing his own profit. The leader's aim is to optimize a linear objective function in the capacity and in the follower's solution, but with respect to different item values. We address a stochastic version of this problem where the follower's profits are uncertain from the leader's perspective, and only a probability distribution is known. Assuming that the leader aims at optimizing the expected value of her objective function, we first obs…
We investigate a distributed optimization problem over a cooperative multi-agent time-varying network, where each agent has its own decision variables that should be set so as to minimize its individual objective subject to local constraints and global coupling constraints. Based on push-sum protocol and dual decomposition, we design a distributed regularized dual gradient algorithm to solve this problem, in which the algorithm is implemented in time-varying directed graphs only requiring the column stochasticity of communication matrices. By augmenting the corresponding Lagrangian function wi…
This paper studies a class of distributed optimization algorithms by a set of agents, where each agent has only access to its own local convex objective function, and jointly minimizes the sum of the functions. The communications among agents are described by a sequence of time-varying directed graphs which are assumed to be uniformly strongly connected. A column stochastic mixing matrices is employed in the algorithm, which also exactly steers all the agents to asymptotically converge to a global and consensual optimal solution even under the assumption that the step-sizes are uncoordinated. …
The emerging edge computing paradigm promises to provide low latency and ubiquitous computation to numerous mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices at the network edge. How to efficiently allocate geographically distributed heterogeneous edge resources to a variety of services is a challenging task. While this problem has been studied extensively in recent years, most of the previous work has largely ignored the preferences of the services when making edge resource allocation decisions. To this end, this paper introduces a novel bilevel optimization model, which explicitly takes the servic…
A Penalty-Based Method for Communication-Efficient Decentralized Bilevel Programming
Amirkabir University of Technology（阿米尔卡比尔理工大学）；American University（美利坚大学）；University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）；University of California, Los Angeles（加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校）
In this paper, we study the distributed optimization problem for a system of agents embedded in time-varying directed communication networks. Each agent has its own cost function and agents cooperate to determine the global decision that minimizes the summation of all individual cost functions. We consider the so-called push-pull gradient-based algorithm (termed as AB/Push-Pull) which employs both row- and column-stochastic weights simultaneously to track the optimal decision and the gradient of the global cost while ensuring consensus and optimality. We show that the algorithm converges linea…
This paper aims at addressing distributed averaging problems for signed networks in the presence of general directed topologies that are represented by signed digraphs. A new class of improved Laplacian potential functions is proposed by presenting two notions of any signed digraph: induced unsigned digraph and mirror (undirected) signed graph, based on which two distributed averaging protocols are designed using the nearest neighbor rules. It is shown that with any of the designed protocols, signed-average consensus (respectively, state stability) can be achieved if and only if the associated…
In this paper, we study the leader-following consensus problem for a class of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems under jointly connected directed switching networks. The uncertainty includes constant unbounded parameters and external disturbances. We first extend the recent result on the adaptive distributed observer from global asymptotical convergence to global exponential convergence. Then, by integrating the conventional adaptive control technique with the adaptive distributed observer, we present our solution by a distributed adaptive state feedback control law. Our result is illustr…
This paper investigates the distributed optimal output consensus problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems over weight-unbalanced directed networks. A novel distributed continuous-time state feedback controller is proposed to steer the outputs of all the agents to converge to the optimal solution of the global cost function. Under the standard condition that the unbalanced digraph is strongly connected and the local cost functions are strongly convex with global Lipschitz gradients, the exponential convergence of the closed-loop multi-agent system is established. Then, the proposed s…
This paper considers a distributed optimization problem over a multi-agent network, in which the objective function is a sum of individual cost functions at the agents. We focus on the case when communication between the agents is described by a \emph{directed} graph. Existing distributed optimization algorithms for directed graphs require at least the knowledge of the neighbors' out-degree at each agent (due to the requirement of column-stochastic matrices). In contrast, our algorithm requires no such knowledge. Moreover, the proposed algorithm achieves the best known rate of convergence for …
In this paper, we study consensus problem in multi-agent system with directed topology by event-triggered feedback control. That is, at each agent, the diffusion coupling feedbacks are based on the information from its latest observations to its in-neighbours. We derive distributed criteria to determine the next observation time of each agent that are triggered by its in-neighbours' information and its own states respectively. We prove that if the network topology is irreducible, then under the event-triggered coupling principles, the multi-agent system reach consensus. Then, we extend these r…
