  This paper considers a fractional programming problem (P) which minimizes a
ratio of quadratic functions subject to a two-sided quadratic constraint. As is
well-known, the fractional objective function can be replaced by a parametric
family of quadratic functions, which makes (P) highly related to, but more
difficult than a single quadratic programming problem subject to a similar
constraint set. The task is to find the optimal parameter $\lambda^*$ and then
look for the optimal solution if $\lambda^*$ is attained. Contrasted with the
classical Dinkelbach method that iterates over the parameter, we propose a
suitable constraint qualification under which a new version of the S-lemma with
an equality can be proved so as to compute $\lambda^*$ directly via an exact
SDP relaxation. When the constraint set of (P) is degenerated to become an
one-sided inequality, the same SDP approach can be applied to solve (P) {\it
without any condition}. We observe that the difference between a two-sided
problem and an one-sided problem lies in the fact that the S-lemma with an
equality does not have a natural Slater point to hold, which makes the former
essentially more difficult than the latter. This work does not, either, assume
the existence of a positive-definite linear combination of the quadratic terms
(also known as the dual Slater condition, or a positive-definite matrix
pencil), our result thus provides a novel extension to the so-called "hard
case" of the generalized trust region subproblem subject to the upper and the
lower level set of a quadratic function.
