Solving a class of nonlinear least squares problems

In many applications the solution of a non-linear least squares problem is desired. The solution of such problems can present difficulties: exhaustive search can be very time consuming while descent algorithms can converge to local minima rather than global minima. Branch-and-bound techniques have been proposed for the solution of such problems; they have the potential for being both efficient and reliable. The application of branch-and-bound techniques to a particular class of nonlinear least squares problems is discussed in this paper.