A tutorial on event-based optimization—a new optimization framework

In many practical systems, the control or decision making is triggered by certain events. The performance optimization of such systems is generally different from the traditional optimization approaches, such as Markov decision processes or dynamic programming. The goal of this tutorial is to introduce, in an intuitive manner, a new optimization framework called event-based optimization. This framework has a wide applicability to aforementioned systems. With performance potential as building blocks, we develop two intuitive optimization algorithms to solve the event-based optimization problem. The optimization algorithms are proposed based on an intuitive principle, and theoretical justifications are given with a performance sensitivity based approach. Finally, we provide a few practical examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the event-based optimization framework. We hope this framework may provide a new perspective to the optimization of the performance of event-triggered dynamic systems.