Asynchronous Distributed Optimization via Dual Decomposition and Block Coordinate Ascent
We study a class of distributed optimization problems of minimizing the sum of potentially non-differentiable convex objective functions (without requiring strong convexity). A novel approach to the analysis of asynchronous distributed optimization is developed. An iterative algorithm based on dual decomposition and block coordinate ascent is implemented in an edge based manner. We extend available results in the literature by allowing multiple and potentially overlapping blocks to be updated at the same time with non-uniform probabilities assigned to different blocks. Sublinear convergence with probability one is proved for the algorithm under the aforementioned weak assumptions. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.