Second order cone constrained convex relaxations for nonconvex quadratically constrained quadratic programming

Abstract

In this paper, we present new convex relaxations for nonconvex quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) problems. While recent research has focused on strengthening convex relaxations of QCQP using the reformulation-linearization technique (RLT), the state-of-the-art methods lose their effectiveness when dealing with (multiple) nonconvex quadratic constraints in QCQP, except for direct lifting and linearization. In this research, we decompose and relax each nonconvex constraint to two second order cone (SOC) constraints and then linearize the products of the SOC constraints and linear constraints to construct some new effective valid constraints. Moreover, we extend the reach of the RLT-like techniques for almost all different types of constraint-pairs (including valid inequalities by linearizing the product of a pair of SOC constraints, and the Hadamard product or the Kronecker product of two respective valid linear matrix inequalities), examine dominance relationships among different valid inequalities, and explore almost all possibilities of gaining benefits from generating valid constraints. We also successfully demonstrate that applying RLT-like techniques to additional redundant linear constraints could reduce the relaxation gap significantly. We demonstrate the efficiency of our results with numerical experiments.