Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- Creators: Jones, Scott, Ph.D
- Creators: Scaglione, Anna
Description
Our ability to understand networks is important to many applications, from the analysis and modeling of biological networks to analyzing social networks. Unveiling network dynamics allows us to make predictions and decisions. Moreover, network dynamics models have inspired new ideas for computational methods involving multi-agent cooperation, offering effective solutions for optimization tasks. This dissertation presents new theoretical results on network inference and multi-agent optimization, split into two parts -
The first part deals with modeling and identification of network dynamics. I study two types of network dynamics arising from social and gene networks. Based on the network dynamics, the proposed network identification method works like a `network RADAR', meaning that interaction strengths between agents are inferred by injecting `signal' into the network and observing the resultant reverberation. In social networks, this is accomplished by stubborn agents whose opinions do not change throughout a discussion. In gene networks, genes are suppressed to create desired perturbations. The steady-states under these perturbations are characterized. In contrast to the common assumption of full rank input, I take a laxer assumption where low-rank input is used, to better model the empirical network data. Importantly, a network is proven to be identifiable from low rank data of rank that grows proportional to the network's sparsity. The proposed method is applied to synthetic and empirical data, and is shown to offer superior performance compared to prior work. The second part is concerned with algorithms on networks. I develop three consensus-based algorithms for multi-agent optimization. The first method is a decentralized Frank-Wolfe (DeFW) algorithm. The main advantage of DeFW lies on its projection-free nature, where we can replace the costly projection step in traditional algorithms by a low-cost linear optimization step. I prove the convergence rates of DeFW for convex and non-convex problems. I also develop two consensus-based alternating optimization algorithms --- one for least square problems and one for non-convex problems. These algorithms exploit the problem structure for faster convergence and their efficacy is demonstrated by numerical simulations.
I conclude this dissertation by describing future research directions.
The first part deals with modeling and identification of network dynamics. I study two types of network dynamics arising from social and gene networks. Based on the network dynamics, the proposed network identification method works like a `network RADAR', meaning that interaction strengths between agents are inferred by injecting `signal' into the network and observing the resultant reverberation. In social networks, this is accomplished by stubborn agents whose opinions do not change throughout a discussion. In gene networks, genes are suppressed to create desired perturbations. The steady-states under these perturbations are characterized. In contrast to the common assumption of full rank input, I take a laxer assumption where low-rank input is used, to better model the empirical network data. Importantly, a network is proven to be identifiable from low rank data of rank that grows proportional to the network's sparsity. The proposed method is applied to synthetic and empirical data, and is shown to offer superior performance compared to prior work. The second part is concerned with algorithms on networks. I develop three consensus-based algorithms for multi-agent optimization. The first method is a decentralized Frank-Wolfe (DeFW) algorithm. The main advantage of DeFW lies on its projection-free nature, where we can replace the costly projection step in traditional algorithms by a low-cost linear optimization step. I prove the convergence rates of DeFW for convex and non-convex problems. I also develop two consensus-based alternating optimization algorithms --- one for least square problems and one for non-convex problems. These algorithms exploit the problem structure for faster convergence and their efficacy is demonstrated by numerical simulations.
I conclude this dissertation by describing future research directions.
ContributorsWai, Hoi To (Author) / Scaglione, Anna (Thesis advisor) / Berisha, Visar (Committee member) / Nedich, Angelia (Committee member) / Ying, Lei (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Eigenvalues of the Gram matrix formed from received data frequently appear in sufficient detection statistics for multi-channel detection with Generalized Likelihood Ratio (GLRT) and Bayesian tests. In a frequently presented model for passive radar, in which the null hypothesis is that the channels are independent and contain only complex white Gaussian noise and the alternative hypothesis is that the channels contain a common rank-one signal in the mean, the GLRT statistic is the largest eigenvalue $\lambda_1$ of the Gram matrix formed from data. This Gram matrix has a Wishart distribution. Although exact expressions for the distribution of $\lambda_1$ are known under both hypotheses, numerically calculating values of these distribution functions presents difficulties in cases where the dimension of the data vectors is large. This dissertation presents tractable methods for computing the distribution of $\lambda_1$ under both the null and alternative hypotheses through a technique of expanding known expressions for the distribution of $\lambda_1$ as inner products of orthogonal polynomials. These newly presented expressions for the distribution allow for computation of detection thresholds and receiver operating characteristic curves to arbitrary precision in floating point arithmetic. This represents a significant advancement over the state of the art in a problem that could previously only be addressed by Monte Carlo methods.
ContributorsJones, Scott, Ph.D (Author) / Cochran, Douglas (Thesis advisor) / Berisha, Visar (Committee member) / Bliss, Daniel (Committee member) / Kosut, Oliver (Committee member) / Richmond, Christ (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019