A hybrid analog/digital circuit for solving nonlinear programming problems

Abstract

A hybrid analog-digital electronic circuit for solving non-linear programming problems includes an analog circuit and a digital microcontroller interconnected to each other by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The analog circuit physically realizes a nonlinear programming problem (NLP) where voltages in the analog circuit represent variables in the NLP, and the interconnection of the analog circuit components enforce Karush-Kuhn-Tucke r (KKT) conditions on the variables, such that the voltages in the analog circuit that represent the variables of the NLP naturally converge to an optimal and feasible solution of the NLP. The digital microcontroller sets the voltages in the analog circuit at particular nodes in the analog circuit through the DAC, where the voltages set at the particular nodes determine a precise cost function to be minimized by the analog circuit, where the voltages set at the particular nodes are computed by the digital microcontroller based on measurements obtained from the analog circuit through the ADC.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.