Parameter selection by discrete mollification and the numerical solution of the inverse heat conduction problem

A procedure for the numerical solution of the one-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem, based on the computaion of the solution associated with a suitable filtered version of the noisy data by discrete mollification is presented and a parameter choice criterion, which automatically determines the radius of mollification as a function of the amount of noise in the data, is introduced. Several numerical examples of interest are also analyzed, showing the accuracy and stability properties of the method.