Quadratically constrained quadratic programs on acyclic graphs with application to power flow

Abstract

This paper proves that non-convex quadratically constrained quadratic programs can be solved in polynomial time when their underlying graph is acyclic, provided the constraints satisfy a certain technical condition. When this condition is not satisfied, we propose a heuristic to obtain a feasible point. We demonstrate this approach on optimal power flow problems over radial networks.

29 pages, 2 figures. A special case for optimal power flow problem was published earlier in 49th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing 2011 as "Optimal Power Flow over Tree Networks"