Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Aarnoudse, Leontine, Haring, Mark, van de Wouw, Nathan, Pavlov, Alexey
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19756
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915466165878784
author Aarnoudse, Leontine
Haring, Mark
van de Wouw, Nathan
Pavlov, Alexey
author_facet Aarnoudse, Leontine
Haring, Mark
van de Wouw, Nathan
Pavlov, Alexey
contents Model-free adaptive optimization methods are capable of optimizing unknown, time-varying processes even when other optimization methods are not. However, their practical application is often limited by perturbations that are used to gather information on the unknown cost and its gradient. The aim of this paper is to develop a perturb-and-observe (P&O) method that reduces the need for such perturbations while still achieving fast and accurate tracking of time-varying optima. To this end, a (time-varying) model of the cost is constructed in an online fashion, taking into account the uncertainty on the measured performance cost as well as the decreasing reliability of older measurements. Perturbations are only used when this is expected to lead to improved performance over a certain time horizon. Convergence conditions are provided under which the strategy converges to a neighborhood of the optimum. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that uncertainty-based P\&O can reduce the number of perturbations significantly while still tracking a time-varying optimum accurately.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_19756
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uncertainty-Based Perturb and Observe for Fast Optimization of Unknown, Time-Varying Processes
Aarnoudse, Leontine
Haring, Mark
van de Wouw, Nathan
Pavlov, Alexey
Systems and Control
Model-free adaptive optimization methods are capable of optimizing unknown, time-varying processes even when other optimization methods are not. However, their practical application is often limited by perturbations that are used to gather information on the unknown cost and its gradient. The aim of this paper is to develop a perturb-and-observe (P&O) method that reduces the need for such perturbations while still achieving fast and accurate tracking of time-varying optima. To this end, a (time-varying) model of the cost is constructed in an online fashion, taking into account the uncertainty on the measured performance cost as well as the decreasing reliability of older measurements. Perturbations are only used when this is expected to lead to improved performance over a certain time horizon. Convergence conditions are provided under which the strategy converges to a neighborhood of the optimum. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that uncertainty-based P\&O can reduce the number of perturbations significantly while still tracking a time-varying optimum accurately.
title Uncertainty-Based Perturb and Observe for Fast Optimization of Unknown, Time-Varying Processes
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19756