Distributed Combined Space Partitioning and Network Flow Optimization: an Optimal Transport Approach (Extended Version)

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Hauptverfasser: Laurentin, Théo, Coirault, Patrick, Moulay, Emmanuel, Lesage-Landry, Antoine, Ny, Jerome Le
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Laurentin, Théo
Coirault, Patrick
Moulay, Emmanuel
Lesage-Landry, Antoine
Ny, Jerome Le
author_facet Laurentin, Théo
Coirault, Patrick
Moulay, Emmanuel
Lesage-Landry, Antoine
Ny, Jerome Le
contents This paper studies a combined space partitioning and network flow optimization problem, with applications to large-scale power, transportation, or communication systems. In dense wireless networks, one may want to simultaneously optimize the assignment of many spatially distributed users to base stations and route the resulting communication traffic through the backbone network. We formulate the overall problem by coupling a semi-discrete optimal transport (SDOT) problem, capturing the space partitioning component, with a minimum-cost flow problem on a discrete network. This formulation jointly optimizes the assignment of a continuous demand distribution to certain endpoint network nodes and the routing of flows over the network to serve the demand, under capacity constraints. As for SDOT problems, we show that the formulation of our problem admits a tight relaxation taking the form of an infinite-dimensional linear program, derive a finite-dimensional dual problem, and show that strong duality holds. We leverage these results to design a distributed dual gradient ascent algorithm to solve the problem, where nodes in the graph perform computations based solely on locally available information. Simulation results illustrate the algorithm performance and its applicability to an electric power distribution network reconfiguration problem. This version extends the CDC 2025 conference paper with additional proof sketches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_00279
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Distributed Combined Space Partitioning and Network Flow Optimization: an Optimal Transport Approach (Extended Version)
Laurentin, Théo
Coirault, Patrick
Moulay, Emmanuel
Lesage-Landry, Antoine
Ny, Jerome Le
Optimization and Control
This paper studies a combined space partitioning and network flow optimization problem, with applications to large-scale power, transportation, or communication systems. In dense wireless networks, one may want to simultaneously optimize the assignment of many spatially distributed users to base stations and route the resulting communication traffic through the backbone network. We formulate the overall problem by coupling a semi-discrete optimal transport (SDOT) problem, capturing the space partitioning component, with a minimum-cost flow problem on a discrete network. This formulation jointly optimizes the assignment of a continuous demand distribution to certain endpoint network nodes and the routing of flows over the network to serve the demand, under capacity constraints. As for SDOT problems, we show that the formulation of our problem admits a tight relaxation taking the form of an infinite-dimensional linear program, derive a finite-dimensional dual problem, and show that strong duality holds. We leverage these results to design a distributed dual gradient ascent algorithm to solve the problem, where nodes in the graph perform computations based solely on locally available information. Simulation results illustrate the algorithm performance and its applicability to an electric power distribution network reconfiguration problem. This version extends the CDC 2025 conference paper with additional proof sketches.
title Distributed Combined Space Partitioning and Network Flow Optimization: an Optimal Transport Approach (Extended Version)
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00279