how I'm using Octave

[Joseph P. Skudlarek]

>From the Octave Info Preface

        If you find it useful, please let us know.  We are always
        interested to find out how Octave is being used in other places.

To help design and analyze our Bluetooth radio chip (transmitter and)
analog receiver, we've written a high performance high fidelity system
level simulator, implemented with DSP techniques, using Octave.  

To date, this digital communications system simulator has been the bulk
of my Octave usage, and Octave (on Linux) has been invaluable.  I'm
routinely running simulations on a Linux compute server that take hours;
the alternative simulation methods would easily take weeks of simulation
time, and it's not much of an alternative, since it would still be
difficult to determine the bit error rate for our receiver, our goal.

In addition, I've used Octave in the past for learning about non-linear
constrained optimization problems (see, eg, Tim Kelley's "Iterative
Methods for Linear and Nonlinear Equations" and "Iterative Methods for
Optimization"), as well as for cross-checking other solution techniques;
see, eg, 
http://www.mathsource.com/Content/Applications/Mathematics/0207-289


        MultiplierMethod -- A General Purpose Nonlinear Programming
        Algorithm for Constrained Nonlinear Optimization

        Jean-Christophe Culioli, Joseph P. Skudlarek

        This is an implementation of the Method of Multipliers (also
        known as the Augmented Lagrangian Method) due to Hestenes,
        Powell, Rockafellar and others. It solves nonlinear programming
        minimization problems with inequality and/or equality
        constraints. As such, it is a natural generalization of the
        FindMinimum built-in Mathematica function. See for example
        D. G. Luenberger, "Linear and Nonlinear Programming" (2nd Ed.),
        Addison-Wesley, 1984. See also Dimitri. P. Bertsekas,
        "Constrained Optimization and Lagrange Multiplier Methods",
        Athena Scientific, 1986; and Dimitri P. Bertsekas, "Nonlinear
        Programming" (2nd Ed.), Athena Scientific, 1999.

Again, thanks for a wonderful! system for computation -- it's fast, it's
well documented, and it's wonderfully functional, and it's been very
very reliable -- it is a fabulous computing resource.

/Joseph P. Skudlarek