A combined direct-iterative approach for solving large scale singular and rectangular consistent systems of linear equations

Abstract

We construct a certain iterative scheme for solving large scale consistent systems of linear equations Ax = b , (*) where A is a complex m X n matrix of rank r , m ⩾ n , and where A is assumed reasonably well conditioned. The iterative method is obtained through a careful exploitation of an LU -decomposition of A , and, disregarding roundoff errors, it converges to a solution to ( * ), though not necessarily the minimal l 2 -norm one, from any starting vector in r iterations. Moreover, once the LU -decomposition of A is complete, only about r 3 /2 arithmetic operations (multiplications and divisions) are needed to execute the r iterations.