On Polynomial Stochastic Barrier Functions: Bernstein Versus Sum-of-Squares

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Amorese, Peter, Lahijanian, Morteza
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Amorese, Peter
Lahijanian, Morteza
author_facet Amorese, Peter
Lahijanian, Morteza
contents Stochastic Barrier Functions (SBFs) certify the safety of stochastic systems by formulating a functional optimization problem, which state-of-the-art methods solve using Sum-of-Squares (SoS) polynomials. This work focuses on polynomial SBFs and introduces a new formulation based on Bernstein polynomials and provides a comparative analysis of its theoretical and empirical performance against SoS methods. We show that the Bernstein formulation leads to a linear program (LP), in contrast to the semi-definite program (SDP) required for SoS, and that its relaxations exhibit favorable theoretical convergence properties. However, our empirical results reveal that the Bernstein approach struggles to match SoS in practical performance, exposing an intriguing gap between theoretical advantages and real-world feasibility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09164
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Polynomial Stochastic Barrier Functions: Bernstein Versus Sum-of-Squares
Amorese, Peter
Lahijanian, Morteza
Optimization and Control
Systems and Control
Stochastic Barrier Functions (SBFs) certify the safety of stochastic systems by formulating a functional optimization problem, which state-of-the-art methods solve using Sum-of-Squares (SoS) polynomials. This work focuses on polynomial SBFs and introduces a new formulation based on Bernstein polynomials and provides a comparative analysis of its theoretical and empirical performance against SoS methods. We show that the Bernstein formulation leads to a linear program (LP), in contrast to the semi-definite program (SDP) required for SoS, and that its relaxations exhibit favorable theoretical convergence properties. However, our empirical results reveal that the Bernstein approach struggles to match SoS in practical performance, exposing an intriguing gap between theoretical advantages and real-world feasibility.
title On Polynomial Stochastic Barrier Functions: Bernstein Versus Sum-of-Squares
topic Optimization and Control
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09164