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. 2017 Jun 5;2017(1):129. doi: 10.1186/s13660-017-1405-0

A symmetric version of the generalized alternating direction method of multipliers for two-block separable convex programming

Jing Liu 1,2, Yongrui Duan 1, Min Sun 3,4,
PMCID: PMC5487945  PMID: 28680232

Abstract

This paper introduces a symmetric version of the generalized alternating direction method of multipliers for two-block separable convex programming with linear equality constraints, which inherits the superiorities of the classical alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), and which extends the feasible set of the relaxation factor α of the generalized ADMM to the infinite interval [1,+). Under the conditions that the objective function is convex and the solution set is nonempty, we establish the convergence results of the proposed method, including the global convergence, the worst-case O(1/k) convergence rate in both the ergodic and the non-ergodic senses, where k denotes the iteration counter. Numerical experiments to decode a sparse signal arising in compressed sensing are included to illustrate the efficiency of the new method.

Keywords: alternating direction method of multipliers, convex programming, mixed variational inequalities, compressed sensing

Introduction

We consider the two-block separable convex programming with linear equality constraints, where the objective function is the sum of two individual functions with decoupled variables:

min{θ1(x1)+θ2(x2)|A1x1+A2x2=b,x1X1,x2X2}, 1

where θi:RniR (i=1,2) are closed proper convex functions; AiRl×ni (i=1,2) and bRl, and XiRni (i=1,2) are given nonempty closed convex sets. The linear constrained convex problem (1) is a unified framework of many problems arising in real world, including compressed sensing, image restoration, and statistical learning, and so forth (see, for example, [13]). An important special case of (1) is the following linear inverse problem:

minxRnμx1+12Axy2, 2

where ARm×n and yRm are given matrix and vector, μ>0 is a regularization parameter and x1 is the 1-norm of a vector x defined as x1=i=1n|xi|. Then setting x1:=Axy, x2:=x, (2) can be converted into the following two-block separable convex programming:

min12x12+μx21s.t. x1+Ax2=y,s.t.x1Rm,x2Rn, 3

which is a special case of problem (1) with the following specifications:

θ1(x1):=12x12,θ2(x2):=μx21,A1:=Im,A2:=A,b:=y.

Existing algorithms

In their seminal work, Glowinski et al. [4] and Gabay et al. [5] independently developed the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), which is an influential first-order method for solving problem (1). ADMM can be regarded as an application of the Douglas-Rachford splitting method (DRSM) [6] to the dual of (1), or a special case of the proximal point algorithm (PPA) [7, 8] in the cyclic sense. We refer to [9] for a more detailed relationship. With any initial vectors x20X2, λ0Rl, the iterative scheme of ADMM reads

{x1k+1argminx1X1{θ1(x1)x1A1λk+β2A1x1+A2x2kb2},x2k+1argminx2X2{θ2(x2)x2A2λk+β2A1x1k+1+A2x2b2},λk+1=λkβ(A1x1k+1+A2x2k+1b), 4

where λRl is the Lagrangian multiplier and β>0 is a penalty parameter. The main characteristics of ADMM are that it in full exploits the separable structure of problem (1), and that it updates the variables x1, x2, λ in an alternating order by solving a series of low-dimensional sub-problems with only one unknown variable.

In the past few decades, ADMM has received a revived interest, and it has become a research focus in optimization community, especially in the (non)convex optimization. Many efficient ADMM-type methods have been developed, including the proximal ADMM [8, 10], the generalized ADMM [11], the symmetric ADMM [12], the inertial ADMM [13], and some proximal ADMM-type methods [1418]. Specifically, the proximal ADMM attaches some proximal terms to the sub-problems of ADMM (4). The generalized ADMM updates the variables x2 and λ by including a relaxation factor α(0,2), and α(1,2) is often advantageous to speed up its performance. The symmetric ADMM updates the Lagrangian multiplier λ twice at each iteration and includes two relaxation factors α(0,1), β(0,1). Recent researches of the symmetric ADMM can be found in [12, 15, 18]. The inertial ADMM unifies the basic ideas of the inertial PPA and ADMM, which utilizes the latest two iterates to generate the new iterate, therefore it can be viewed as a multistep method. For the proximal ADMM, the objective functions of its sub-problems are often strongly convex, which are often easier to be solved than those of (4). However, a new challenge has arisen for the proximal ADMM-type methods. It is how to choose a proper proximal matrix. In fact, most proximal ADMM-type methods need to estimate the matrix norm AiAi (i=1,2), which demands lots of calculations, especially for large ni (i=1,2). Quite recently, some customized Douglas-Rachford splitting algorithms [1921], and the proximal ADMM-type methods with indefinite proximal regularization are developed [22, 23], which dissolve the above problem to some extent. All the above mentioned ADMM-type methods are generalizations of the classical ADMM, because they all reduce to the iterative scheme (4) by choosing some special parameters. For more new development of the ADMM-type methods, including the convergence rate, acceleration techniques, its generalization for solving multi-block separable convex programming and nonconvex, nonsmooth programming, we refer to [2428].

Contributions and organization

We are going to further study the generalized ADMM. Note that the first sub-problem in the generalized ADMM is irrelevant to the relaxation factor α. That is, the updating formula for x1 does not incorporate the relaxation factor α explicitly. Furthermore, α(1,2) is often advantageous for the generalized ADMM [14]. Therefore, in this paper, we are going to propose a new generalized ADMM, whose both sub-problems incorporate the relaxation factor α directly. The new method generalizes the method proposed in [29] by relaxing the feasible set of α from the interval [1,2) to the infinite interval [1,+), and can be viewed as a symmetric version of the generalized ADMM.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we summarize some necessary preliminaries and characterize problem (1) by a mixed variational inequality problem. In Section 3, we describe the new symmetric version of the generalized ADMM and establish its convergence results in detail. In Section 4, some compressed sensing experiments are given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Some conclusions are drawn in Section 5.

Preliminaries

In this section, some necessary preliminaries which are useful for further discussions are presented, and to make our analysis more succinct, some positive definite or positive semi-definite block matrices are defined and their properties are investigated.

For two real matrices ARs×m, BRn×s, the Kronecker product of A and B is defined as AB=(aijB). Let p (p=1,2) denote the standard definition of p-norm; in particular, =2. For any two vectors x,yRn, x,y or xy denote their inner product, and for any symmetric matrix GRn×n, the symbol G0 (resp., G0) denotes that G is positive definite (resp., semi-definite). For any xRn and G0, the G-norm xG of the vector x is defined as xGx. The effective domain of a closed proper function f:X(,+] is defined as dom(f):={xX|f(x)<+}, and the symbol ri(C) denotes the set of all relative interior points of a given nonempty convex set C. Furthermore, we use the following notations:

x=(x1,x2),w=(x,λ).

Definition 2.1

[30]

A function f:RnR is convex if and only if

f(αx+(1α)y)αf(x)+(1α)f(y),x,yRn,α[0,1].

Then, for a convex function f:RnR, we have the following basic inequality:

f(x)f(y)+ξ,xy,x,yRn,ξf(y), 5

where f(y)={ξRn:f(y¯)f(y)+ξ,y¯y,for all y¯Rn} denotes the subdifferential of f() at the point y.

Throughout the paper, we make the following standard assumptions for problem (1).

Assumption 2.1

The functions θi() (i=1,2) are convex.

Assumption 2.2

The matrices Ai (i=1,2) are full-column rank.

Assumption 2.3

The generalized Slater condition holds, i.e., there is a point (xˆ1,xˆ2)ri(domθ1×domθ2){x=(x1,x2)X1×X2|A1x1+A2x2=b}.

The mixed variational inequality problem

Under Assumption 2.3, it follows from Theorem 3.22 and Theorem 3.23 of [31] that x=(x1,x2)Rn1+n2 is an optimal solution to problem (1) if and only if there exists a vector λRl such that (x1,x2,λ) is a solution of the following KKT system:

{0θi(xi)Aiλ+NXi(xi),i=1,2,A1x1+A2x2=b, 6

where NXi(xi) is the normal cone of the convex set Xi at the point xi, which is defined as NXi(xi)={zRni|z,xixi0,xiXi}. Then, for the nonempty convex set Xi and xiXi, it follows from [32] (Example 2.123) that NXi(xi)=δ(|Xi)(xi), where δ(|Xi) is the indicator function of the set Xi, and δ(|Xi)(xi) is the subdifferential mappings of δ(|Xi) at the point xiXi.

Lemma 2.1

For any vector xiRni, λRl, the relationship 0θi(xi)Aiλ+δ(|Xi)(xi) is equivalent to xiXi and the inequality

θi(xi)θi(xi)+(xixi)(Aiλ)0,xiXi.

Proof

From 0θi(xi)Aiλ+δ(|Xi)(xi), we have xiXi and there exists ηiδ(|Xi)(xi) such that

Aiληiθi(xi).

From the subgradient inequality (5), one has

θi(xi)θi(xi)(xixi)(Aiληi),xiRni.

Thus,

θi(xi)θi(xi)(xixi)(Aiλ)(xixi)(ηi)0,xiXi,

where the second inequality comes from xiXi and ηiδ(|Xi)(xi).

Conversely, from θi(xi)θi(xi)+(xixi)(Aiλ)0, xiXi, we have

θi(xi)+xi(Aiλ)θi(xi)+(xi)(Aiλ),xiXi,

which together with xiXi implies that

xi=argminxiXi{θi(xi)+xi(Aiλ)}.

From this and Theorem 3.22 of [31], we have 0θi(xi)Aiλ+δ(|Xi)(xi). This completes the proof. □

Remark 2.1

Based on (6) and Lemma 2.1, the vector x=(x1,x2)Rn1+n2 is an optimal solution to problem (1) if and only if there exists a vector λRl such that

{(x1,x2)X1×X2;θi(xi)θi(xi)+(xixi)(Aiλ)0,xiXi,i=1,2;A1x1+A2x2=b. 7

Moreover, any λRl satisfying (7) is an optimal solution to the dual of problem (1). Obviously, (7) can be written as the following mixed variational inequality problem, denoted by VI(W,F,θ): Find a vector wW such that

θ(x)θ(x)+(ww)F(w)0,wW, 8

where θ(x)=θ1(x1)+θ2(x2), W=X1×X2×Rl, and

F(w):=(A1λA2λA1x1+A2x2b)=(00A100A2A1A20)(x1x2λ)(00b). 9

The solution set of VI(W,F,θ), denoted by W, is nonempty by Assumption 2.3 and Remark 2.1. It is easy to verify that the linear function F() is not only monotone but also satisfies the following desired property:

(ww)(F(w)F(w))=0,w,wW.

Three matrices and their properties

To present our analysis in a compact way, now let us define some matrices. For any RiRni×ni(i=1,2)0, set

M=(In1000In200βA2Il) 10

and for α[1,+), set

Q=(R1000R2+(2α1)βA2A21ααA20A21αβIl),H=(R1000R2+2α22α+1αβA2A21ααA201ααA21αβIl). 11

The above defined three matrices M, Q, H satisfy the following properties.

Lemma 2.2

If αR and Ri0 (i=1,2), then the matrix H defined in (11) is positive semi-definite.

Proof

Set t=2α22α+1, which is positive for any αR. By (11), we have

H=(R1000R20000)+(0000tβαA2A21ααA201ααA21αβIl).

Obviously, the first part is positive semi-definite, and we only need to prove the second part is also positive semi-definite. In fact, it can written as

1α(0000βA20001βIl)(0000tIl(1α)Il0(1α)IlIl)(0000βA20001βIl).

The middle matrix in the above expression can be further written as

(0000t1α01α1)Il,

where ⊗ denotes the matrix Kronecker product. The matrix Kronecker product has a nice property: for any two matrices X and Y, the eigenvalue of XY equals the product of λ(X)λ(Y), where λ(X) and λ(Y) are the eigenvalues of X and Y, respectively. Therefore, we only need to show the 2-by-2 matrix

(t1α1α1)

is positive semi-definite. In fact,

t(1α)2=α20.

Therefore, the matrix H is positive semi-definite. The proof is then complete. □

Lemma 2.3

If α[1,+) and Ri0 (i=1,2), then the matrices M, Q, H defined, respectively, in (10), (11) satisfy the following relationships:

HM=Q 12

and

Q+QMHMα12αMHM. 13

Proof

From (10) and (11), we have

HM=(R1000R2+2α22α+1αβA2A21ααA201ααA21αβIl)(In1000In200βA2Il)=(R1000R2+(2α1)βA2A21ααA20A21αβIl)=Q.

Then the first assertion is proved. For (13), by some simple manipulations, we obtain

MHM=MQ=(In1000In2βA200Il)(R1000R2+(2α1)βA2A21ααA20A21αβIl)=(R1000R2+2αβA2A2A20A21αβIl).

We now break up the proof into two cases. First, if α=1, then

(Q+Q)MHM=(R1000R20001βIl)0.

Therefore, (13) holds. Second, if α(1,+), then

(Q+Q)MHM=(R1000R2+(2α2)βA2A21ααA201ααA21αβIl)=(R1000R20000)+(2α2)(0000βA2A212αA2012αA21αβ(2α2)Il). 14

Note that

4α(βA2A212αA212αA21αβ(2α2)Il)(2αβA2A2A2A21αβIl)=(2αβA2A2A2A2α+1αβ(α1)Il)=(βA2001βIl)(2αIlIlIlα+1α(α1)Il)(βA2001βIl). 15

The middle matrix in the above expression can be further written as

(2α11α+1α(α1))Il.

Since

(2α11α+1α(α1))0,α>1,

the right-hand side of (15) is also positive semi-definite. Thus, we have

(βA2A212αA212αA21αβ(2α2)Il)14α(2αβA2A2A2A21αβIl). 16

Substituting (16) into (14) and by the expression of MHM, we obtain (13). The lemma is proved. □

Algorithm and convergence results

In this section, we first describe the symmetric version of the generalized alternating direction method of multipliers (SGADMM) for VI(W,F,θ) formally, and then we prove its global convergence in a contraction perspective and establish its worst-case O(1/k) convergence rate in both the ergodic and the non-ergodic senses step by step, where k denotes the iteration counter.

Algorithm

Algorithm 3.1

SGADMM

Step 0.

Choose the parameters α[1,+), β>0, RiRni×ni0 (i=1,2), the tolerance ε>0 and the initial iterate (x10,x20,λ0)X1×X2×Rl. Set k:=0.

Step 1.
Generate the new iterate wk+1=(x1k+1,x2k+1,λk+1) by
{x1k+1argminx1X1{θ1(x1)x1A1λk+αβ2A1x1+A2x2kb2x1k+1+12x1x1kR12},x2k+1argminx2X2{θ2(x2)x2A2λk+(2α1)β2A1x1k+1+A2x2b2x2k+1+12x2x2kR22},λk+1=λkβ[αA1x1k+1(1α)(A2x2kb)+A2x2k+1b]. 17
Step 2.
If
max{R1x1kR1x1k+1,R2x2kR2x2k+1,A2x2kA2x2k+1,λkλk+1}<ε, 18
then stop and return an approximate solution (x1k+1,x2k+1,λk+1) of VI(W,F,θ); else set k:=k+1, and goto Step 1.

Remark 3.1

Obviously, the iterative scheme (17) reduces to the generalized ADMM when α=1, and further reduces to (4) when Ri=0 (i=1,2). That is to say, if the parameters α=1 and Ri=0 (i=1,2), then the classical ADMM is recovered. Since the convergence results of the (proximal) ADMM have been established in the literature [23, 33, 34], in the following, we only consider α(1,+).

Global convergence

For further analysis, we need to define an auxiliary sequence {wˆk} as follows:

wˆk=(xˆ1kxˆ2kλˆk)=(x1k+1x2k+1λkαβ(A1x1k+1+A2x2kb)). 19

Lemma 3.1

Let {λk+1} and {λˆk} be the two sequences generated by SGADMM. Then

λk+1=λˆkβ(A2xˆ2kA2x2k) 20

and

λˆk(1α1)(λˆkλk)=λk(2α1)β(A1xˆ1k+A2x2kb). 21

Proof

From the definition of λk+1, we get

λk+1=λkβ[αA1xˆ1k(1α)(A2x2kb)+A2xˆ2kb]=λkβ[α(A1xˆ1k+A2x2kb)+(A2xˆ2kA2x2k)]=λˆkβ(A2xˆ2kA2x2k).

Then (20) is proved. For (21), we have

λˆk(1α1)(λˆkλk)=λkαβ(A1xˆ1k+A2x2kb)+(1α1)αβ(A1xˆ1k+A2x2kb)=λk(2α1)β(A1xˆ1k+A2x2kb).

Therefore (21) is also right. This completes the proof. □

Thus, based on (19) and (20), the two sequences {wk} and {wˆk} satisfies the following relationship:

wk+1=wkM(wkwˆk), 22

where M is defined in (10).

The following lemma shows that the stopping criterion (18) of SGADMM is reasonable.

Lemma 3.2

If Rixik=Rixik+1 (i=1,2), A2x2k=A2x2k+1 and λk=λk+1, then the iterate wˆk=(xˆ1k,xˆ2k,λˆk) produced by SGADMM is a solution of VI(W,F,θ).

Proof

By invoking the optimality condition of the three sub-problems in (4), we have the following mixed variational inequality problems: for any w=(x1,x2,λ)W,

{θ1(x1)θ1(xˆ1k)+(x1xˆ1k){A1[λkαβ(A1xˆ1k+A2x2kb)]+R1(xˆ1kx1k)}0,θ2(x2)θ2(xˆ2k)+(x2xˆ2k){A2[λk(2α1)β(A1xˆ1k+A2xˆ2kb)]}+R2(xˆ2kx2k)0,(λλˆk)[αA1xˆ1k(1α)(A2x2kb)+A2xˆ2kb(λkλk+1)/β]0.

Then, adding the above three inequalities and by (20), (21), we get

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk){(A1λˆkA2λˆkA1xˆ1k+A2xˆ2kb)+(R1(xˆ1kx1k)(2α1)βA2(A2xˆ2kA2x2k)+(1α)A2(λˆkλk)/α+R2(xˆ2kx2k)(1α)(A2x˜2kA2x2k)/α+(λk+1λk)/(αβ))}0.

Then by (19), we obtain

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk){F(wˆk)(R1(xˆ1kx1k)(2α1)βA2(A2x˜2kA2x2k)+(1α)A2(λˆkλk)/α+R2(xˆ2kx2k)(A2xˆ2kA2x2k)+(λˆkλk)/(αβ))+(R1(xˆ1kx1k)(2α1)βA2(A2x˜2kA2x2k)+(1α)A2(λˆkλk)/α+R2(xˆ2kx2k)(A2xˆ2kA2x2k)+(λˆkλk)/(αβ))}0.

Then, by (11) (the definition of Q), the above inequality can be rewritten as

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk)F(wˆk)(wwˆk)Q(wkwˆk), 23

for any wW. Therefore, if Rixik=Rixik+1 (i=1,2), A2x2k=A2x2k+1 and λk=λk+1, then by (20), we have λk+1=λˆk. Then λˆk=λk. Thus, we have

Q(wkwˆk)=0,

which together with (23) implies that

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk)F(wˆk)0,wW.

This indicates that the vector wˆk is a solution of VI(W,F,θ). This completes the proof. □

Lemma 3.3

Let {wk} and {wˆk} be two sequences generated by SGADMM. Then, for any wW, we have

(wwˆk)Q(wkwˆk)12(wwk+1H2wwkH2)+α12αwkwk+1H2. 24

Proof

Applying the identity

(ab)H(cd)=12(adH2acH2)+12(cbH2dbH2),

with

a=w,b=wˆk,c=wk,d=wk+1,

we obtain

(wwˆk)H(wkwk+1)=12(wwk+1H2wwkH2)+12(wkwˆkH2wk+1wˆkH2).

This together with (12) and (22) implies that

(wwˆk)Q(wkwˆk)=12(wwk+1H2wwkH2)+12(wkwˆkH2wk+1wˆkH2). 25

Now let us deal with the last term in (25), which can be written as

wkwˆkH2wk+1wˆkH2=wkwˆkH2(wkwˆk)(wkwk+1)H2=wkwˆkH2(wkwˆk)M(wkwˆk)H2(using (22))=2(wkwˆk)HM(wkwˆk)(wkwˆk)MHM(wkwˆk)=(wkwˆk)(Q+QMHM)(wkwˆk)α12α(wkwˆk)MHM(wkwˆk)(using (13))=α12αwkwk+1H2(using (22)).

Substituting the above inequality into (25), the assertion of this lemma is proved. □

Theorem 3.1

Let {wk} and {wˆk} be two sequences generated by SGADMM. Then, for any wW, we have

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk)F(w)12(wwk+1H2wwkH2)+α12αwkwk+1H2. 26

Proof

First, combining (23) and (24), we get

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk)F(wˆk)12(wwk+1H2wwkH2)+α12αwkwk+1H2.

From the monotonicity of F(), we have

(wwˆk)(F(w)F(wˆk))0.

Adding the above two inequalities, we obtain the assertion (26). The proof is completed. □

With the above theorem in hand, we are ready to establish the global convergence of SGADMM for solving VI(W,F,θ).

Theorem 3.2

Let {wk} be the sequence generated by SGADMM. If α>1, Ri+βAiAi0 (i=1,2), then the corresponding sequence {wk} converges to some w, which belongs to W.

Proof

Setting w=w in (26), we have

wkwH2α1αwkwk+1H22{θ(xˆk)θ(x)+(wˆkw)F(w)}+wk+1wH2wk+1wH2,

where the second inequality follows from wW. Thus, we have

wk+1wH2wkwH2α1αwkwk+1H2. 27

Summing over k=0,1,,, it yields

k=0wkwk+1H2αα1w0wH2.

By α>1 and the positive semi-definite of H, the above inequality implies that

limkwkwk+1H2=0.

Thus, by the definition of H, we have

limkx1kx1k+1R12=limkvkvk+1H12=0, 28

where

H1=(R2+2α22α+1αβA2A21ααA21ααA21αβIl),

is positive definite by R2+βA2A20. From (27) again, we have

wk+1wH2w0wH2,

which indicates that the sequence {Hwk} is bounded. Thus, {R1x1k}k=0 and {H1vk}k=0 are both bounded. Then {vk}k=0 is bounded. If R10, {x1k}k=0 is bounded; otherwise, A1A10, that is, A1 is full-column rank, which together with A1x1=(λkλk+1)/(αβ)+(1α)(A2x2kb)/α(A2x2k+1b)/α implies that {x1k}k=0 is bounded. In conclusion, {wk}k=0 is bounded.

Then, from (28) and H10, the sequence {vk} is convergent. Suppose it converges to v. Let w=(x1,v) be a cluster point of {wk} and {wkj} be the corresponding subsequence. On the other hand, by (20) and (28), we have

limkR1(x1kxˆ1k)=0,limk(x2kxˆ2k)=0

and

limk(λkλˆk)=limk(λkλk+1+β(A2xˆ2kA2x2k))=0.

Thus,

limkQ(wkwˆk)=0. 29

Then, taking the limit along the subsequence {wkj} in (23) and using (29), for any wW, we obtain

θ(x)θ(x)+(ww)F(w)0,

which indicates that w is a solution of VI(W,F,θ). Then, since w in (27) is arbitrary, we can set w=w and conclude that the whole generated sequence {wk} converges by Ri+βAiAi0 (i=1,2). This completes the proof. □

Convergence rate

Now, we are going to prove the worst-case O(1/t) convergence rate of SGADMM in both the ergodic and the non-ergodic senses.

Theorem 3.3

Let {wk} and {wˆk} be the sequences generated by SGADMM, and set

w¯t=1t+1k=0twˆk.

Then, for any integer t0, we have w¯tW, and

θ(x¯t)θ(x)+(w¯tw)F(w)12(t+1)ww0H2,wW. 30

Proof

From (17) and the convexity of the set W, we have w¯kW. From (26), we have

θ(x)θ(xˆk)+(wwˆk)F(w)+12wwkH212wwk+1H2,wW.

Summing the above inequality over k=0,1,,t, we get

(t+1)θ(x)k=0tθ(xˆk)+((t+1)wk=0twˆk)F(w)+12ww0H20,wW.

By the definition of w¯t and the convexity of θ(), the assertion (30) follows immediately from the above inequality. This completes the proof. □

The proof of the next two lemmas is referred to those of Lemmas 5.1 and 5.2 in [24]. For completeness, we give the detail proof.

Lemma 3.4

Let {wk} be the sequence generated by SGADMM. Then we have

(wkwk+1)H{(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)}3α14α(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H2. 31

Proof

Setting w=wˆk+1 in (23), we have

θ(xˆk+1)θ(xˆk)+(wˆk+1wˆk)F(wˆk)(wˆk+1wˆk)Q(wkwˆk).

Similarly setting w=wˆk in (23) for k:=k+1, we get

θ(xˆk)θ(xˆk+1)+(wˆkwˆk+1)F(wˆk+1)(wˆkwˆk+1)Q(wk+1wˆk+1).

Then, adding the above two inequalities and using the monotonicity of the mapping F(), we get

(wˆkwˆk+1)Q{(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)}0. 32

By (32), we have

(wkwk+1)Q{(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)}={(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)+(wˆkwˆk+1)}Q{(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)}=(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)Q2+(wˆkwˆk+1)Q{(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)}(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)Q2.

Using (13), (22) and Q=HM on both sides of the above inequality, we get

(wkwk+1)H{(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)}=(wkwk+1)QM1{(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)}=(wkwk+1)Q{(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)}(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)Q2=[(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)]Q[(wkwˆk)(wk+1wˆk+1)]=[(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)]M1QM1[(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)]3α14α[(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)]×M1MHMM1[(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)]=3α14α(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H2.

Then we get the assertion (31). The proof is completed. □

Lemma 3.5

Let {wk} be the sequence generated by SGADMM. Then we have

wk+1wk+2H2wkwk+1H2α12α(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H2. 33

Proof

Setting a:=(wkwk+1) and b:=(wk+1wk+2) in the identity

aH2bH2=2aH(ab)abH2,

we can derive

wkwk+1H2wk+1wk+2H2=2(wkwk+1)H{(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)}(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H23α12α(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H2(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H2=α12α(wkwk+1)(wk+1wk+2)H2,

which completes the proof of the lemma. □

Based on Lemma 3.5, now we establish the worst-case O(1/t) convergence rate of SGADMM in a non-ergodic sense.

Theorem 3.4

Let {wk} be the sequence generated by SGADMM. Then, for any wW and integer t0, we have

wtwt+1H2α(t+1)(α1)w0wH2. 34

Proof

By (27), we get

α1αk=0twkwk+1H2w0wH2.

This and (33) imply that

(t+1)(α1)αwtwt+1H2w0wH2.

Therefore, the assertion of this theorem comes from the above inequality immediately. The proof is completed. □

Remark 3.2

From (34), we see that the larger α is, the smaller αα1, which controls the upper bounds of wtwt+1H2. Therefore, it seems that larger values of α are more beneficial for speeding up the convergence of SGADMM.

Numerical experiments

In this section, we present some numerical experiments to verify the efficiency of SGADMM for solving compressed sensing. Those numerical experiments are performed in Matlab R2010a on a ThinkPad computer equipped with Windows XP, 997 MHz and 2 GB of memory.

Compressed sensing (CS) is to recover a sparse signal x¯Rn from an undetermined linear system b=Ax¯, where ARm×n (mn), can be depicted as problem (2).

Obviously, Problem (2) is equivalent to the following two models:

  1. Model 1: Problem (3).

  2. Model 2:
    minμx11+12Ax2y2s.t. x1x2=0,s.t.x1Rn,x2Rn. 35

The iterative schemes for (3) and (35)

Since (3) and (35) are both some concrete models of (1), SGADMM are applicable to them. Below, we elaborate on how to derive the closed-form solutions for the sub-problems resulting by SGADMM.

For problem (3), its first two sub-problems resulting by SGADMM are as follows.

• With the given x2k and λk, the x1-sub-problem in (17) is (here R1=0)

x1k+1=argminx1Rn{12x122+x1λ+αβ2x1Ax2k+y2},

which has the following closed-form solution:

x1k+1=11+αβ(αβ(Ax2ky)λk).

• With the updated x1k+1, the x2-sub-problem in (17) is (here R2=τIn(2α1)βAA with τ(2α1)βAA)

x2k+1=argminx2Rn{μx21x2Aλk+(2α1)β2x1k+1+Ax2y2+12x2x2kR22},

and its closed-form solution is given by

x2k+1=shrinkμτ((2α1)βA(x1k+1+y)/τ+(τIn(2α1)βAA)x2k/τ+Aλk/τ),

where, for any c>0, shrinkc() is defined as

shrinkc(g):=gmin{c,|g|}g|g|,gRn,

and (g/|g|)i should be taken 0 if |g|i=0.

Similarly, for problem (35), its first two sub-problems resulting by SGADMM are as follows.

• With the given x2k and λk, the x1-sub-problem in (17) is (here R1=0)

x1k+1=argminx1Rn{μx11+αβ2x1(x2k+1αβλk)2},

and its closed-form solution is given by

x1k+1=shrinkμαβ(x2k+1αβλk).

• With the updated x1k+1, the x2-sub-problem in (17) is (here R2=τInAA with τAA)

x2k+1=argminx2Rn{12Ax2y2+x2λk+(2α1)β2x2x1k+12+12x2x2kR22},

and its closed-form solution is given by

x2k+1=1τ+(2α1)β(Ayλk+(2α1)βx1k+1+AAx2k).

Obviously, the above two iterative schemes both need to compute AA and Ay, which is quite time consuming if n is large. However, noting that these two terms are invariant during the iteration process, therefore we need only compute them once before all iterations.

Regarding the penalty parameter β and the constant α in SGADMM, any β>0 and α1 can ensure the convergence of SGADMM in theory. There are two traditional methods to determine them in practice. One is the tentative method, which is easy to execute. The other is the self-adaptive adjustment method, which needs much computation. In this experiment, for β and α, we use the tentative method to determine their suitable values. For β, Xiao et al. [35] set β=mean(abs(y)) for ADMM. Motivated by this choice, we set β=mean(abs(y))/(2α1) in our algorithm. As for the parameter α, we have pointed out in Remark 3.2 that larger values of α may be beneficial for our algorithm. Here, we use (3) to do a little experiment to test this. We choose different values of α in the interval [1,2]. Specifically, we choose α{1.0,1.1,,2}. Other data about this experiment are as follows: the proximal parameter τ is set as τ=1.01(2α1)βAA; the observed signal y is set as y=Ax+0.01×randn(m,1) in Matlab; the sensing matrix A and the original signal x are generated by

A¯=randn(m,n),[Q,R]=qr(A¯,0),A=Q,

and

x=zeros(n,1);p=randperm(n);x(p(1:k))=randn(k,1).

Then the observed signal y is further set as (R)1y. The initial points are set as x20=Ay, λ0=Ax20. In addition, we set the regularization parameter μ=0.01, and the dimensions of the problem are set as n=1,000, m=300, k=60, where k denotes the number of the non-zeros in the original signal x. To evaluate the quality of the recovered signal, let us define the quantity ‘RelErr’ as follows:

RelErr=x˜xx,

where denotes the recovered signal. The stopping criterion is

fkfk1fk1<105,

where fk denotes the function value of (2) at the iterate xk.

Numerical results

The numerical results are graphicly shown in Figure 1. Clearly, the numerical results in Figure 1 indicate that Remark 3.2 is reasonable. Both CPU time and number of iterations are descent with respect to α. Then, in the following, we set α=1.4, which is a moderate choice for α.

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Sensitivity test on the parameter α .

Now, let us graphically show the recovered results of SGADMM for (3) and (35). The proximal parameter τ is set as τ=1.01(2α1)βAA for (3), and τ=1.01AA for (35). The initial points are set as x20=Ay, λ0=Ax20 for (3), and x20=Ay, λ0=x20 for (35). Other parameters are set the same as above. Figure 2 reports the numerical results of SGADMM for (3) and (35).

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Numerical results of SGADMM for ( 3 ) and ( 35 ). The top: the original signal; the second: the noisy measurement; the bottom two: recovered signal.

The bottom two subplots in Figure 2 indicate that our new method SGADMM can be used to solve (3) and (35).

In the following, we do some numerical comparisons to illustrate the advantage of our new method and to analyze which one is more suitable to compressed sensing (2) between the two models (3) and (35). SGADMM for (3) is denoted by SGADMM1, SGADMM for (35) is denoted by SGADMM2. We also compare SGADMM with the classical ADMM. The numerical results are listed in Table 1, where ‘Time’ denotes the CPU time (in seconds), and ‘Iter’ denotes the number of iterations required for the whole recovering process, m=floor(γn), k=floor(σm). The numerical results are the average of the numerical results of ten runs with different combinations of γ and σ.

Table 1.

Comparison of SGADMM1, SGADMM2 and ADMM

n γ σ SGADMM1 SGADMM2 ADMM
Time Iter RelErr Time Iter RelErr Time Iter RelErr
1,000 0.3 0.2 0.6911 92.4 0.0387 0.9578 266.0 0.0394 0.9812 264.0 0.0393
0.2 0.2 0.6661 118.6 0.0825 1.3915 421.8 0.0915 1.3603 419.6 0.0915
0.2 0.1 0.5008 85.3 0.0609 0.4758 139.0 0.0579 0.5008 138.0 0.0539
2,000 0.3 0.2 2.1965 90.0 0.0437 3.6535 267.7 0.0447 3.5412 265.6 0.0447
0.2 0.2 2.2339 109.6 0.0785 5.2182 431.4 0.0874 5.1543 429.0 0.0874
0.2 0.1 1.5428 79.9 0.0534 1.7893 142.8 0.0467 1.7613 140.8 0.0513

Discussion

The numerical results in Table 1 indicate that: (1) by the criterion ‘RelErr’, all methods successfully solved all the cases; (2) by the criteria ‘Time’ and ‘Iter’, SGADMM1 performs better than the other two methods. Especially the number of iterations of SGADMM1 is about at most two-thirds of the other two methods. This experiment also indicate that the model (3) is also an effective model for compressed sensing, and sometimes it is more efficient than the model (35), though they are equivalent in theory. In conclusion, by choosing some relaxation factor α[1,+), SGADMM may be more efficient than the classical ADMM.

Conclusions

In this paper, we have proposed a symmetric version of the generalized ADMM (SGADMM), which generalizes the feasible set of the relaxation factor α from (0,2) to [1,+). Under the same conditions, we have proved the convergence results of the new method. Some numerical results illustrate that it may perform better than the classical ADMM. In the future, we shall study SGADMM with α(0,1) to perfect the theoretical system.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments of the anonymous reviewers. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11601475, 71532015), the foundation of First Class Discipline of Zhejiang-A (Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics - Statistics).

Footnotes

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

The first author has proved the convergence results; the second author has accomplished the numerical experiment; and the third author has proposed the motivation of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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