arXiv subjects

Liliana Borcea

Publications and source records attributed to Liliana Borcea.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

ROMNet: a hybrid reduced order modeling and machine learning approach to waveform inversion

Waveform inversion seeks to estimate the wave speed of a heterogeneous, inaccessible medium, from time-resolved measurements of the waves at user controlled sensors. We consider this inverse problem for acoustic waves and an active array of source/receiver sensors that emit probing signals and measure the generated pressure waves. The forward map, from the wave speed to the measurements, is nonlinear and oscillatory. The oscillations cause cycle skipping, the main impediment to using the standard, nonlinear least-squares data fitting formulation, known as full waveform inversion (FWI). A recently introduced alternative waveform inversion approach computes from the measurements an algebraic surrogate of the wave operator, a reduced order model (ROM) matrix, which is then used to estimate the wave speed. The mapping from the measurements to the ROM is nonlinear, but well understood. It is computed efficiently, in a non-iterative manner. The nonlinear mapping from the ROM to the wave speed is less understood, and its approximation involves time-consuming optimization. Our goal in this paper is to use a neural network to map the ROM matrix to a nearby one, that has a simpler and explicit dependence on the wave speed. This simplifies and reduces the computational cost of the ROM-based waveform inversion. We introduce the methodology, called ROMNet, and test it with numerical simulations, using two training data sets: The first set consists of random media with variations of the wave speed modeled by a superposition of Gaussians with random amplitudes and standard deviations. The second is the publicly available GeoFWI dataset introduced for benchmarking FWI using deep learning. We compare the performance of ROMNet with the direct ROM-based inversion and with two representative deep learning approaches to FWI: ``Fourier-DeepONet" and ``InversionNet".

math.NA↗

arXiv2026

Quantitative synthetic aperture radar inversion

We study an inverse scattering problem for monostatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR): Estimate the wave speed in a heterogeneous, isotropic and nonmagnetic medium probed by waves emitted and measured by a moving antenna. The forward map, from the wave speed to the measurements, is derived from Maxwell's equations. It is a nonlinear map that accounts for multiple scattering and it is very oscillatory at high frequencies. This makes the standard, nonlinear least squares data fitting formulation of the inverse problem difficult to solve. We introduce an alternative, two-step approach: The first step computes the nonlinear map from the measurements to an approximation of the electric field inside the unknown medium aka, the internal wave. This is done for each antenna location in a non-iterative manner. The internal wave fits the data by construction, but it does not solve Maxwell's equations. The second step uses optimization to minimize the discrepancy between the internal wave and the solution of Maxwell's equations, for all antenna locations. The optimization is iterative. The first step defines an imaging function whose computational cost is comparable to that of standard SAR imaging, but it gives a better estimate of the support of targets. Further iterations improve the quantitative estimation of the wave speed. We assess the performance of the method with numerical simulations and compare the results with those of standard inversion.

math.NA↗

arXiv2025

Waveform inversion with a data driven estimate of the internal wave

We study an inverse problem for the wave equation, concerned with estimating the wave speed, aka velocity, from data gathered by an array of sources and receivers that emit probing signals and measure the resulting waves. The typical mathematical formulation of velocity estimation is a nonlinear least squares minimization of the data misfit, over a search velocity space. There are two main impediments to this approach, which manifest as multiple local minima of the objective function: The nonlinearity of the mapping from the velocity to the data, which accounts for multiple scattering effects, and poor knowledge of the kinematics (smooth part of the wave speed) which causes cycle-skipping. We show that the nonlinearity can be mitigated using a data driven estimate of the internal wave field. This leads to improved performance of the inversion for a reasonable initial guess of the kinematics.

math.NA↗

arXiv2025

Reduced Order Modeling for First Order Hyperbolic Systems with Application to Multiparameter Acoustic Waveform Inversion

Waveform inversion seeks to estimate an inaccessible heterogeneous medium from data gathered by sensors that emit probing signals and measure the generated waves. It is an inverse problem for a second order wave equation or a first order hyperbolic system, with the sensor excitation modeled as a forcing term and the heterogeneous medium described by unknown, spatially variable coefficients. The traditional ``full waveform inversion" (FWI) formulation estimates the unknown coefficients via minimization of the nonlinear, least squares data fitting objective function. For typical band-limited and high frequency data, this objective function has spurious local minima near and far from the true coefficients. Thus, FWI implemented with gradient based optimization algorithms may fail, even for good initial guesses. Recently, it was shown that it is possible to obtain a better behaved objective function for wave speed estimation, using data driven reduced order models (ROMs) that capture the propagation of pressure waves, governed by the classic second order wave equation. Here we introduce ROMs for vectorial waves, satisfying a general first order hyperbolic system. They are defined via Galerkin projection on the space spanned by the wave snapshots, evaluated on a uniform time grid with appropriately chosen time step. Our ROMs are data driven: They are computed in an efficient and non-iterative manner, from the sensor measurements, without knowledge of the medium and the snapshots. The ROM computation applies to any linear waves in lossless and non-dispersive media. For the inverse problem we focus attention on acoustic waves in a medium with unknown variable wave speed and density. We show that these can be determined via minimization of an objective function that uses a ROM based approximation of the vectorial wave field inside the inaccessible medium.

math.NA↗

arXiv2024

When data driven reduced order modeling meets full waveform inversion

Waveform inversion is concerned with estimating a heterogeneous medium, modeled by variable coefficients of wave equations, using sources that emit probing signals and receivers that record the generated waves. It is an old and intensively studied inverse problem with a wide range of applications, but the existing inversion methodologies are still far from satisfactory. The typical mathematical formulation is a nonlinear least squares data fit optimization and the difficulty stems from the non-convexity of the objective function that displays numerous local minima at which local optimization approaches stagnate. This pathological behavior has at least three unavoidable causes: (1) The mapping from the unknown coefficients to the wave field is nonlinear and complicated. (2) The sources and receivers typically lie on a single side of the medium, so only backscattered waves are measured. (3) The probing signals are band limited and with high frequency content. There is a lot of activity in the computational science and engineering communities that seeks to mitigate the difficulty of estimating the medium by data fitting. In this paper we present a different point of view, based on reduced order models (ROMs) of two operators that control the wave propagation. The ROMs are called data driven because they are computed directly from the measurements, without any knowledge of the wave field inside the inaccessible medium. This computation is non-iterative and uses standard numerical linear algebra methods. The resulting ROMs capture features of the physics of wave propagation in a complementary way and have surprisingly good approximation properties that facilitate waveform inversion. In this arxiv version two important typos are corrected when compared to the published version. The typo was in the second equation in Theorem 3 and carried over into Corollary 1. The proofs are correct.

math.NA↗

arXiv2024

Electromagnetic inverse wave scattering in anisotropic media via reduced order modeling

The inverse wave scattering problem seeks to estimate a heterogeneous, inaccessible medium, modeled by unknown variable coefficients in wave equations, from transient recordings of waves generated by probing signals. It is a widely studied inverse problem with important applications, that is typically formulated as a nonlinear least squares data fit optimization. For typical measurement setups and band-limited probing signals, the least squares objective function has spurious local minima far and near the true solution, so Newton-type optimization methods fail. We introduce a different approach, for electromagnetic inverse wave scattering in lossless, anisotropic media. Our reduced order model (ROM) is an algebraic, discrete time dynamical system derived from Maxwell's equations with four important properties: (1) It is data driven, without knowledge of the medium. (2) The data to ROM mapping is nonlinear and yet the ROM can be obtained in a non-iterative fashion. (3) It has a special algebraic structure that captures the causal Wave propagation. (4) The ROM interpolates the data on a uniform time grid. We show how to obtain from the ROM an estimate of the wave field at inaccessible points inside the unknown medium. The use of this wave is twofold: First, it defines a computationally inexpensive imaging function designed to estimate the support of reflective structures in the medium, modeled by jump discontinuities of the matrix valued dielectric permittivity. Second, it gives an objective function for quantitative estimation of the dielectric permittivity, that has better behavior than the least squares data fitting objective function. The methodology introduced in this paper applies to Maxwell's equations in three dimensions. To avoid high computational costs, we limit the study to a cylindrical domain filled with an orthotropic medium, so the problem becomes two dimensional.

math.NA↗

arXiv2024

Enhanced wave transmission in random media with mirror symmetry

We present an analysis of enhanced wave transmission through random media with mirror symmetry about a reflecting barrier. The mathematical model is the acoustic wave equation and we consider two setups, where the wave propagation is along a preferred direction: in a randomly layered medium and in a randomly perturbed waveguide. We use the asymptotic stochastic theory of wave propagation in random media to characterize the statistical moments of the frequency dependent random transmission and reflection coefficients, which are scalar valued in layered media and matrix valued in waveguides. With these moments, we can quantify explicitly the enhancement of the net mean transmitted intensity, induced by wave interference near the barrier.

math-ph↗

arXiv2022

Waveform inversion via reduced order modeling

We introduce a novel approach to waveform inversion, based on a data driven reduced order model (ROM) of the wave operator. The presentation is for the acoustic wave equation, but the approach can be extended to elastic or electromagnetic waves. The data are time resolved measurements of the pressure wave gathered by an acquisition system which probes the unknown medium with pulses and measures the generated waves. We propose to solve the inverse problem of velocity estimation by minimizing the square misfit between the ROM computed from the recorded data and the ROM computed from the modeled data, at the current guess of the velocity. We give the step by step computation of the ROM, which depends nonlinearly on the data and yet can be obtained from them in a non-iterative fashion, using efficient methods from linear algebra. We also explain how to make the ROM robust to data inaccuracy. The ROM computation requires the full array response matrix gathered with collocated sources and receivers. However, we show that the computation can deal with an approximation of this matrix, obtained from towed-streamer data using interpolation and reciprocity on-the-fly. While the full-waveform inversion approach of nonlinear least-squares data fitting is challenging without low frequency information, due to multiple minima of the data fit objective function, we show that the ROM misfit objective function has a better behavior, even for a poor initial guess. We also show by an explicit computation of the objective functions in a simple setting that the ROM misfit objective function has convexity properties, whereas the least squares data fit objective function displays multiple local minima.

math.NA↗

arXiv2022

Velocity estimation via model order reduction

A novel approach to full waveform inversion (FWI), based on a data driven reduced order model (ROM) of the wave equation operator is introduced. The unknown medium is probed with pulses and the time domain pressure waveform data is recorded on an active array of sensors. The ROM, a projection of the wave equation operator is constructed from the data via a nonlinear process and is used for efficient velocity estimation. While the conventional FWI via nonlinear least-squares data fitting is challenging without low frequency information, and prone to getting stuck in local minima (cycle skipping), minimization of ROM misfit is behaved much better, even for a poor initial guess. For low-dimensional parametrizations of the unknown velocity the ROM misfit function is close to convex. The proposed approach consistently outperforms conventional FWI in standard synthetic tests.

math.NA↗

arXiv2022

Paraxial wave propagation in random media with long-range correlations

We study the paraxial wave equation with a randomly perturbed index of refraction, which can model the propagation of a wave beam in a turbulent medium. The random perturbation is a stationary and isotropic process with a general form of the covariance that may be integrable or not. We focus attention mostly on the non-integrable case, which corresponds to a random perturbation with long-range correlations, that is relevant for propagation through a cloudy turbulent atmosphere. The analysis is carried out in a high-frequency regime where the forward scattering approximation holds. It reveals that the randomization of the wave field is multiscale: The travel time of the wave front is randomized at short distances of propagation and it can be described by a fractional Brownian motion. The wave field observed in the random travel time frame is affected by the random perturbations at long distances, and it is described by a Schroedinger-type equation driven by a standard Brownian field. We use these results to quantify how scattering leads to decorrelation of the spatial and spectral components of the wave field and to a deformation of the pulse emitted by the source. These are important questions for applications like imaging and free space communications with pulsed laser beams through a turbulent atmosphere. We also compare the results with those used in the optics literature, which are based on the Kolmogorov model of turbulence.

math.AP↗

arXiv2021

A reduced order model approach to inverse scattering in lossy layered media

We introduce a reduced order model (ROM) methodology for inverse electromagnetic wave scattering in layered lossy media, using data gathered by an antenna which generates a probing wave and measures the time resolved reflected wave. We recast the wave propagation problem as a passive infinite-dimensional dynamical system, whose transfer function is expressed in terms of the measurements at the antenna. The ROM is a low-dimensional dynamical system that approximates this transfer function. While there are many possible ROM realizations, we are interested in one that preserves passivity and in addition is: (1) data driven (i.e., is constructed only from the measurements) and (2) it consists of a matrix with special sparse algebraic structure, whose entries contain spatially localized information about the unknown dielectric permittivity and electrical conductivity of the layered medium. Localized means in the intervals of a special finite difference grid. The main result of the paper is to show with analysis and numerical simulations that these unknowns can be extracted efficiently from the ROM.

math.DS↗

arXiv2021

Reduced order model approach for imaging with waves

We introduce a novel, computationally inexpensive approach for imaging with an active array of sensors, which probe an unknown medium with a pulse and measure the resulting waves. The imaging function uses a data driven estimate of the "internal wave" originating from the vicinity of the imaging point and propagating to the sensors through the unknown medium. We explain how this estimate can be obtained using a reduced order model (ROM) for the wave propagation. We analyze the imaging function, connect it to the time reversal process and describe how its resolution depends on the aperture of the array, the bandwidth of the probing pulse and the medium through which the waves propagate. We also show how the internal wave can be used for selective focusing of waves at points in the imaging region. This can be implemented experimentally and can be used for pixel scanning imaging. We assess the performance of the imaging methods with numerical simulations and compare them to the conventional reverse-time migration method and the "backprojection" method introduced recently as an application of the same ROM.

math.NA↗

arXiv2021

Imaging in random media by two-point coherent interferometry

This paper considers wave-based imaging through a heterogeneous (random) scattering medium. The goal is to estimate the support of the reflectivity function of a remote scene from measurements of the backscattered wave field. The proposed imaging methodology is based on the coherent interferometric (CINT) approach that exploits the local empirical cross correlations of the measurements of the wave field. The standard CINT images are known to be robust (statistically stable) with respect to the random medium, but the stability comes at the expense of a loss of resolution. This paper shows that a two-point CINT function contains the information needed to obtain statistically stable and high-resolution images. Different methods to build such images are presented, theoretically analyzed and compared with the standard imaging approaches using numerical simulations. The first method involves a phase-retrieval step to extract the reflectivity function from the modulus of its Fourier transform. The second method involves the evaluation of the leading eigenvector of the two-point CINT imaging function seen as the kernel of a linear operator. The third method uses an optimization step to extract the reflectivity function from some cross products of its Fourier transform. The presentation is for the synthetic aperture radar data acquisition setup, where a moving sensor probes the scene with signals emitted periodically and records the resulting backscattered wave. The generalization to other imaging setups, with passive or active arrays of sensors, is discussed briefly.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2020

Reduced Order Model Approach to Inverse Scattering

We study an inverse scattering problem for a generic hyperbolic system of equations with an unknown coefficient called the reflectivity. The solution of the system models waves (sound, electromagnetic or elastic), and the reflectivity models unknown scatterers embedded in a smooth and known medium. The inverse problem is to determine the reflectivity from the time resolved scattering matrix (the data) measured by an array of sensors. We introduce a novel inversion method, based on a reduced order model (ROM) of an operator called wave propagator, because it maps the wave from one time instant to the next, at interval corresponding to the discrete time sampling of the data. The wave propagator is unknown in the inverse problem, but the ROM can be computed directly from the data. By construction, the ROM inherits key properties of the wave propagator, which facilitate the estimation of the reflectivity. The ROM was introduced previously and was used for two purposes: (1) to map the scattering matrix to that corresponding to the single scattering (Born) approximation and (2) to image i.e., obtain a qualitative estimate of the support of the reflectivity. Here we study further the ROM and show that it corresponds to a Galerkin projection of the wave propagator. The Galerkin framework is useful for proving properties of the ROM that are used in the new inversion method which seeks a quantitative estimate of the reflectivity.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

Multiplexing schemes for optical communication through atmospheric turbulence

A central question in free-space optical communications is how to improve the transfer of information between a transmitter and receiver. The capacity of the communication channel can be increased by multiplexing of independent modes using either: (1) the MIMO (Multiple-Input-Multiple- Output) approach, where the communication is done with modes obtained from the singular value decomposition of the transfer matrix from the transmitter array to the receiver array, or (2) the OAM (Orbital Angular Momentum) approach, which uses vortex beams that carry angular momenta. In both cases, the number of usable modes is limited by the finite aperture of the transmitter and receiver, and the effect of the turbulent atmosphere. The goal of this paper is twofold: First, we show that the MIMO and OAM multiplexing schemes are closely related. Specifically, in the case of circular apertures, the usable singular modes of the transfer matrix are essentially the same as the commonly used Laguerre-Gauss vortex beams, provided these have a special radius that depends on the wavelength, the distance from the transmitter to the receiver and the ratio of the radii of their apertures. Second, we study the effect of atmospheric turbulence on the communication modes using the phase screen method put in the mathematical framework of beam propagation in random media.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2019

Reduced order models for spectral domain inversion: Embedding into the continuous problem and generation of internal data

We generate data-driven reduced order models (ROMs) for inversion of the one and two dimensional Schrödinger equation in the spectral domain given boundary data at a few frequencies. The ROM is the Galerkin projection of the Schrödinger operator onto the space spanned by solutions at these sample frequencies. The ROM matrix is in general full, and not good for extracting the potential. However, using an orthogonal change of basis via Lanczos iteration, we can transform the ROM to a block triadiagonal form from which it is easier to extract $q$. In one dimension, the tridiagonal matrix corresponds to a three-point staggered finite-difference system for the Schrödinger operator discretized on a so-called spectrally matched grid which is almost independent of the medium. In higher dimensions, the orthogonalized basis functions play the role of the grid steps. The orthogonalized basis functions are localized and also depend only very weakly on the medium, and thus by embedding into the continuous problem, the reduced order model yields highly accurate internal solutions. That is to say, we can obtain, just from boundary data, very good approximations of the solution of the Schrödinger equation in the whole domain for a spectral interval that includes the sample frequencies. We present inversion experiments based on the internal solutions in one and two dimensions.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

High-Resolution Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Imaging in scattering media

The goal of synthetic aperture imaging is to estimate the reflectivity of a remote region of interest by processing data gathered with a moving sensor which emits periodically a signal and records the backscattered wave. We introduce and analyze a high-resolution interferometric method for synthetic aperture imaging through an unknown scattering medium which distorts the wave. The method builds on the coherent interferometric (CINT) approach which uses empirical cross-correlations of the measurements to mitigate the distortion, at the expense of a loss of resolution of the image. The new method shows that, while mitigating the wave distortion, it is possible to obtain a robust and sharp estimate of the modulus of the Fourier transform of the reflectivity function. A high-resolution image can then be obtained by a phase retrieval algorithm.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2019

Factorization method versus migration imaging in a waveguide

We present a comparative study of two qualitative imaging methods in an acoustic waveguide with sound hard walls. The waveguide terminates at one end and contains unknown obstacles of compact support, to be determined from data gathered by an array of sensors that probe the obstacles with waves and measure the scattered response. The first imaging method, known as the factorization method, is based on the factorization of the far field operator. It is designed to image at single frequency and estimates the support of the obstacles by a Picard range criterion. The second imaging method, known as migration, works either with one or multiple frequencies. It forms an image by backpropagating the measured scattered wave to the search points, using the Green's function in the empty waveguide. We study the connection between these methods with analysis and numerical simulations.

math.AP↗