An overview of sensitivity-based distributed optimization and model predictive control

This paper presents a concise overview of sensitivity-based methods for solving large-scale optimization problems in distributed fashion. The approach relies on sensitivities and primal decomposition to achieve coordination between the subsystems while requiring only local computations with neighbor-to-neighbor communication. We give a brief historical synopsis of its development and apply it to both static and dynamic optimization problems. Furthermore, a real-time capable distributed model predictive controller is proposed which is experimentally validated on a coupled water tank system.