Asymptotic coefficients for Gaussian radial basis function interpolants

Gaussian radial basis functions (RBFs) on an infinite interval with uniform grid pacing h are defined by ?(x;α,h)≡exp(-[α²/h²]x²). The only significant numerical parameter is α, the inverse width of the RBF functions relative to h. In the limit α→0, we demonstrate that the coefficients of the interpolant of a typical function f(x) grow proportionally to exp(π²/[4α²]). However, we also show that the approximation to the constant f(x)≡1 is a Jacobian theta function whose coefficients do not blow up as α→0. The subtle interplay between the complex-plane singularities of f(x) (the function being approximated) and the RBF inverse width parameter α are analyzed. For α≈1/2, the size of the RBF coefficients and the condition number of the interpolation matrix are both no larger than O(10⁴) and the error saturation is smaller than machine epsilon, so this α is the center of a “safe operating range” for Gaussian RBFs.     

The regularizing properties of anisotropic radial basis functions

In the present work we consider the problem of interpolating scattered data using radial basis functions (RBF). In general, it is well known that this leads to a discrete linear inverse problem that needs to be regularized in order to provide a meaningful solution. The work focuses on a metric-regularization approach, based on a new class of RBF, called anisotropic RBF. The work provides theoretical justifications for the regularization approach and it considers a suitable proposal for the metric, supporting it by numerical examples.     

Numerical experiments on the condition number of the interpolation matrices for radial basis functions

Through numerical experiments, we examine the condition numbers of the interpolation matrix for many species of radial basis functions (RBFs), mostly on uniform grids. For most RBF species that give infinite order accuracy when interpolating smooth f(x)—Gaussians, sech's and Inverse Quadratics—the condition number κ(α,N) rapidly asymptotes to a limit κasymp(α) that is independent of N and depends only on α, the inverse width relative to the grid spacing. Multiquadrics are an exception in that the condition number for fixed α grows as N². For all four, there is growth proportional to an exponential of 1/α (1/α² for Gaussians). For splines and thin-plate splines, which contain no width parameter, the condition numbers grows asymptotically as a power of N—a large power as the order of the RBF increases. Random grids typically increase the condition number (for fixed RBF width) by orders of magnitude. The quasi-random, low discrepancy Halton grid may, however, have a lower condition number than a uniform grid of the same size.     

Numerical differentiation by radial basis functions approximation

Based on radial basis functions approximation, we develop in this paper a new com-putational algorithm for numerical differentiation. Under an a priori and an a posteriori choice rules for the regularization parameter, we also give a proof on the convergence error estimate in reconstructing the unknown partial derivatives from scattered noisy data in multi-dimension. Numerical examples verify that the proposed regularization strategy with the a posteriori choice rule is effective and stable to solve the numerical differential problem. *The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from CityU (Project No. 7001646) and partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 10571079).     

Numerical solutions of KdV equation using radial basis functions

Numerical solution of the Korteweg-de Vries equation is obtained by using the meshless method based on the collocation with radial basis functions. Five standard radial basis functions are used in the method of the collocation. The results are compared for the numerical experiments of the propagation of solitons, interaction of two solitary waves and breakdown of initial conditions into a train of solitons.     

Solitary wave solutions of the MRLW equation using radial basis functions

In this study, traveling wave solutions of the modified regularized long wave (MRLW) equation are simulated by using the meshless method based on collocation with well‐known radial basis functions. The method is tested for three test problems which are single solitary wave motion, interaction of two solitary waves and interaction of three solitary waves. Invariant values for all test problems are calculated, also L₂, L_∞ norms and values of the absolute error for single solitary wave motion are calculated. Numerical results by using the meshless method with different radial basis functions are presented. Figures of wave motions for all test problems are shown. Altogether, meshless methods with radial basis functions solve the MRLW equation very satisfactorily.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 28: 235–247, 2012     

An overlapping additive Schwarz preconditioner for interpolation on the unit sphere with spherical radial basis functions

The problem of interpolation of scattered data on the unit sphere has many applications in geodesy and Earth science in which the sphere is taken as a model for the Earth. Spherical radial basis functions provide a convenient tool for constructing the interpolant. However, the underlying linear systems tend to be ill-conditioned. In this paper, we present an additive Schwarz preconditioner for accelerating the solution process. An estimate for the condition number of the preconditioned system will be discussed. Numerical experiments using MAGSAT satellite data will be presented.     

Rational radial basis function interpolation with applications to antenna design

Functions with poles occur in many branches of applied mathematics which involve resonance phenomena. Such functions are challenging to interpolate, in particular in higher dimensions. In this paper we develop a technique for interpolation with quotients of two radial basis function (RBF) expansions to approximate such functions as an alternative to rational approximation. Since the quotient is not uniquely determined we introduce an additional constraint, the sum of the RBF-norms of the numerator and denominator squared should be minimal subjected to a norm condition on the function values. The method was designed for antenna design applications and we show by examples that the scattering matrix for a patch antenna as a function of some design parameters can be approximated accurately with the new method. In many cases, e.g. in antenna optimization, the function evaluations are time consuming, and therefore it is important to reduce the number of evaluations but still obtain a good approximation. A sensitivity analysis of the new interpolation technique is carried out and it gives indications how efficient adaptation methods could be devised. A family of such methods are evaluated on antenna data and the results show that much performance can be gained by choosing the right method.     

The rate of approximation of Gaussian radial basis neural networks in continuous function space

There have been many studies on the dense theorem of approximation by radial basis feedforword neural networks, and some approximation problems by Gaussian radial basis feedforward neural networks(GRBFNs)in some special function space have also been investigated. This paper considers the approximation by the GRBFNs in continuous function space. It is proved that the rate of approximation by GRNFNs with n~d neurons to any continuous function f defined on a compact subset K(R~d)can be controlled by ω(f, n~(-1/2)), where ω(f, t)is the modulus of continuity of the function f .     

On the solution of the non-local parabolic partial differential equations via radial basis functions

In this paper, the problem of solving the one-dimensional parabolic partial differential equation subject to given initial and non-local boundary conditions is considered. The approximate solution is found using the radial basis functions collocation method. There are some difficulties in computing the solution of the time dependent partial differential equations using radial basis functions. If time and space are discretized using radial basis functions, the resulted coefficient matrix will be very ill-conditioned and so the corresponding linear system cannot be solved easily. As an alternative method for solution, we can use finite-difference methods for discretization of time and radial basis functions for discretization of space. Although this method is easy to use but an accurate solution cannot be provided. In this work an efficient collocation method is proposed for solving non-local parabolic partial differential equations using radial basis functions. Numerical results are presented and are compared with some existing methods.     

Approximation on the sphere using radial basis functions plus polynomials

In this paper we analyse a hybrid approximation of functions on the sphere by radial basis functions combined with polynomials, with the radial basis functions assumed to be generated by a (strictly) positive definite kernel. The approximation is determined by interpolation at scattered data points, supplemented by side conditions on the coefficients to ensure a square linear system. The analysis is first carried out in the native space associated with the kernel (with no explicit polynomial component, and no side conditions). A more refined error estimate is obtained for functions in a still smaller space. Numerical calculations support the utility of this hybrid approximation.      

Error estimates for matrix-valued radial basis function interpolation

We introduce a class of matrix-valued radial basis functions (RBFs) of compact support that can be customized, e.g. chosen to be divergence-free. We then derive and discuss error estimates for interpolants and derivatives based on these matrix-valued RBFs.     

Numerical solutions of the Kawahara type equations using radial basis functions

This study is carried out to investigate the numerical solutions of the Kawahara, KdV‐Kawahara, and the modified Kawahara equations by using the meshless method based on collocation with radial basis functions. Results of the meshless method with different radial basis functions are presented for the travelling wave solution of the Kawahara type equations. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 28: 542–553, 2012     

Two approaches for the numerical determination of electromagnetic fields near material interfaces using radial basis functions in a meshless method

This article discusses the use of radial basis functions in the solution of partial differential equations. In particular, an investigation of how to implement boundary conditions at material interfaces is presented. A comparison is made of solutions obtained using only radial basis functions with those obtained using either jump functions or elliptical functions in conjunction with standard radial basis functions. The purpose of adding either jump functions or elliptical functions is to alleviate the inaccurate handling of the boundary conditions at material interfaces. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2010     

Numerical solution of the two-dimensional Fredholm integral equations using Gaussian radial basis function

In this paper, we introduce a numerical method for the solution of two-dimensional Fredholm integral equations. The method is based on interpolation by Gaussian radial basis function based on Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto nodes and weights. Numerical examples are presented and results are compared with the analytical solution to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the method.     

A greedy meshless local Petrov–Galerkin methodbased on radial basis functions

The meshless local Petrov–Galerkin (MLPG) method with global radial basis functions (RBF) as trial approximation leads to a full final linear system and a large condition number. This makes MLPG less efficient when the number of data points is increased. We can overcome this drawback if we avoid using more points from the data site than absolutely necessary. In this article, we equip the MLPG method with the greedy sparse approximation technique of (Schaback, Numercail Algorithms 67 (2014), 531–547) and use it for numerical solution of partial differential equations. This scheme uses as few neighbor nodal values as possible and allows to control the consistency error by explicit calculation. Whatever the given RBF is, the final system is sparse and the algorithm is well‐conditioned. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 847–861, 2016     

A density theorem for matrix-valued radial basis functions

Recently a new class of customized radial basis functions (RBFs) was introduced. We revisit this class of RBFs and derive a density result guaranteeing that any sufficiently smooth divergence-free function can be approximated arbitrarily closely by a linear combination of members of this class. This result has potential applications to numerically solving differential equations, such as fluid flows, whose solution is divergence free. AMS subject classification 41Axx, 41A30, 41A35, 41A60Svenja Lowitzsch: The results are part of the authorss dissertation written at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.     

Numerical experiments on optimal shape parameters for radial basis functions

A numerical investigation on a technique for choosing an optimal shape parameter is proposed. Radial basis functions (RBFs) and their derivatives are used as interpolants in the asymmetric collocation radial basis method, for solving systems of partial differential equations. The shape parameter c in RBFs plays a major role in obtaining high quality solutions for boundary value problems. As c is a user defined value, inexperienced users may compromise the quality of the solution, often a problem of this meshless method. Here we propose a statistical technique to choose the shape parameter in radial basis functions. We use a cross‐validation technique suggested by Rippa 6 for interpolation problems to find a cost function Cost(c) that ideally has the same behavior as an error function. If that is the case, the parameter c that minimizes the cost function will be an optimal shape parameter, in the sense that it minimizes the error function. The form of the cost and error functions are analized for several examples, and for most cases the two functions have a similar behavior. The technique produced very accurate results, even with a small number of points and irregular grids. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2010     

Kernel based approximation in Sobolev spaces with radial basis functions

In this paper, we study several radial basis function approximation schemes in Sobolev spaces. We obtain an optional error estimate by using a class of smoothing operators. We also discussed sufficient conditions for the smoothing operators to attain the desired approximation order. We then construct the smoothing operators by some compactly supported radial kernels, and use them to approximate Sobolev space functions with optimal convergence order. These kernels can be simply constructed and readily applied to practical problems. The results show that the approximation power depends on the precision of the sampling instrument and the density of the available data.