Sensor Location Problems As Test Problems Of Nonsmooth Optimization And Test Results Of A Few Nonsmooth Optimization Solvers

In this paper we address and advocate the sensor location problems and advocate them as test problems of nonsmooth optimization. These problems have easy-to-understand practical meaning and importance, easy to be even randomly generated, and the solutions can be displayed visually on a 2-dimensional plane. For testing some nonsmooth optimization solvers, we present a very simple sensor location problem of two sensors for four objects with the optimal solutions known by theoretical analysis. We tested several immediately ready-to-use optimization solvers on this problem and found that optimization solvers MATLAB’s ga() and VicSolver’s UNsolver can solve the problem, while some other optimization solvers like Excel solver, Dr Frank Vanden Berghen’s CONDOR, R’s optim(), and MATLAB’s fminunc() cannot solve the problem.

@article{Huang2012,
  title     = {Sensor Location Problems As Test Problems Of Nonsmooth Optimization And Test Results Of A Few Nonsmooth Optimization Solvers},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Research in Artificial Intelligence},
  volume    = {1},
  number    = {2},
  year      = {2012},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Fuchun Huang},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJARAI.2012.010205},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJARAI.2012.010205}
}