Book

Optimization
Using Personal Computers
with Applications
to Electrical Networks

This book is a practical guide to optimization (nonlinear programming) and provides 33 BASIC programs that illustrate the theory and application of methods that automatically adjust design variables. These powerful procedures are most useful when using a personal computer to design or create models in engineering and the sciences. This interaction between user and computer provides quick answers and a feel for fundamental concepts in matrix algebra, calculus, and nonlinear programming.

Optimization Using Personal Computers reviews the broad range of essential topics of matrix algebra with concrete examples and illustrations, avoiding mathematical abstraction wherever possible. Chapter 1 shows that optimization is intuitively appealing as a geometric interpretation of descent on mathematical surfaces in three dimensions by repetitive computational procedures. Chapter 2 provides a concise review of matrix computations required for optimization. Chapter 3 applies these methods to linear and nonlinear functions of many variables.

The three most effective optimization methods are developed, illustrated, and compared in Chapters 4 and 5, including nonlinear constraints on the variables. Chapter 6 combines the features of the preceding topics with a general method to compute exact derivatives of responses for networks and their analogues. This unique book will be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, scientists, and engineers who use personal computers. These machines automatically can adjust several dozen design variables using the methods and objectives for the RF electrical networks described.