An efficient high-order Nystr\"om scheme for acoustic scattering by inhomogeneous penetrable media with discontinuous material interface

This text proposes a fast, rapidly convergent Nystr\"{o}m method for the solution of the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation that mathematically models the scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves by inhomogeneous obstacles, while allowing the material properties to jump across the interface. The method works with overlapping coordinate charts as a description of the given scatterer. In particular, it employs "partitions of unity" to simplify the implementation of high-order quadratures along with suitable changes of parametric variables to analytically resolve the singularities present in the integral operator to achieve desired accuracies in approximations. To deal with the discontinuous material interface in a high-order manner, a specialized quadrature is used in the boundary region. The approach further utilizes an FFT based strategy that uses equivalent source approximations to accelerate the evaluation of large number of interactions that arise in the approximation of the volumetric integral operator and thus achieves a reduced computational complexity of $O(N \log N)$ for an $N$-point discretization. A detailed discussion on the solution methodology along with a variety of numerical experiments to exemplify its performance in terms of both speed and accuracy are presented in this paper

Improved convergence of fast integral equation solvers for acoustic scattering by inhomogeneous penetrable media with discontinuous material interface

In recent years, several fast solvers for the solution of the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation that mathematically models the scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves by penetrable inhomogeneous obstacles, have been proposed. While many of these fast methodologies exhibit rapid convergence for smoothly varying scattering configurations, the rate for most of them reduce to either linear or quadratic when material properties are allowed to jump across the interface. A notable exception to this is a recently introduced Nystr\"{o}m scheme [J. Comput. Phys., 311 (2016), 258--274] that utilizes a specialized quadrature in the boundary region for a high-order treatment of the material interface. In this text, we present a solution framework that relies on the specialized boundary integrator to enhance the convergence rate of other fast, low order methodologies without adding to their computational complexity of $O(N \log N)$ for an $N$-point discretization. In particular, to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework, we explain its implementation to enhance the order to convergence of two schemes, one introduced by Duan and Rokhlin [J. Comput. Phys., 228(6) (2009), 2152--2174] that is based on a pre-corrected trapezoidal rule while the other by Bruno and Hyde [J. Comput. Phys., 200(2) (2004), 670--694] which relies on a suitable decomposition of the Green's function via Addition theorem. In addition to a detailed description of these methodologies, we also present a comparative performance study of the improved versions of these two and the Nystr\"{o}m solver in [J. Comput. Phys., 311 (2016), 258--274] through a wide range of numerical experiments

Improved convergence of fast integral equation solvers for acoustic scattering by inhomogeneous penetrable media with discontinuous material interface

In recent years, several fast solvers for the solution of the Lippmann–Schwinger integral equation that mathematically models the scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves by penetrable inhomogeneous obstacles, have been proposed. While many of these fast methodologies exhibit rapid convergence for smoothly varying scattering configurations, the rate for most of them reduce to either linear or quadratic when material properties are allowed to jump across the interface. A notable exception to this is a recently introduced Nyström scheme (Anand et al., 2016 [22]) that utilizes a specialized quadrature in the boundary region for a high-order treatment of the material interface. In this text, we present a solution framework that relies on the specialized boundary integrator to enhance the convergence rate of other fast, low order methodologies without adding to their computational complexity of O(N log N) for an N-point discretization. In particular, to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework, we explain its implementation to enhance the order to convergence of two schemes, one introduced by Duan and Rokhlin (2009) [13] that is based on a pre-corrected trapezoidal rule while the other by Bruno and Hyde (2004) [12] which relies on a suitable decomposition of the Green's function via Addition theorem. In addition to a detailed description of these methodologies, we also present a comparative performance study of the improved versions of these two and the Nyström solver in Anand et al. (2016) [22] through a wide range of numerical experiments

An efficient high-order Nyström scheme for acoustic scattering by inhomogeneous penetrable media with discontinuous material interface

This text proposes a fast, rapidly convergent Nyström method for the solution of the Lippmann–Schwinger integral equation that mathematically models the scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves by inhomogeneous obstacles, while allowing the material properties to jump across the interface. The method works with overlapping coordinate charts as a description of the given scatterer. In particular, it employs “partitions of unity” to simplify the implementation of high-order quadratures along with suitable changes of parametric variables to analytically resolve the singularities present in the integral operator to achieve desired accuracies in approximations. To deal with the discontinuous material interface in a high-order manner, a specialized quadrature is used in the boundary region. The approach further utilizes an FFT based strategy that uses equivalent source approximations to accelerate the evaluation of large number of interactions that arise in the approximation of the volumetric integral operator and thus achieves a reduced computational complexity of O(N log N) for an N-point discretization. A detailed discussion on the solution methodology along with a variety of numerical experiments to exemplify its performance are presented in this paper

Integral Equation Methods for Ocean Acoustics with Depth-Dependent Background Sound Speed

Time-harmonic acoustic wave propagation in an ocean with depth-dependent background sound speed can be described by the Helmholtz equation in an infinite, two- or three-dimensional waveguide of finite height. A crucial subproblem for the anayltic and numeric treatment of associated wave propagation problems is a Liouville eigenvalue problem that involves the depth-dependent contrast. For different types of background sound speed profiles, we discuss discretization schemes for the Liouville eigenvalue problem arising in the vertical variable. Due to variational theory in Sobolev spaces, we then show well-posedness of weak solutions to the corresponding scattering problem from a bounded inhomogeneity inside such an ocean: We introduce an exterior Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator for depth-dependent sound speed and prove boundedness, coercivity, and holomorphic dependence of this operator in suitable function spaces adapted to our weak solution theory. Analytic Fredholm theory then implies existence and uniqueness of solution for the scattering problem for all but a countable sequence of frequencies. Introducing the Green's function of the waveguide, we prove equivalence of the source problem for the Helmholtz equation with depth-dependent sound speed profile, Neumann boundary condition on the bottom and Dirichlet boundary condition on the top surface, to the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation in dimensions two and three. Next, we periodize the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation in dimensions two and three. The periodized version of the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation and an interpolation projection onto a space spanned by finitely many eigenfunctions in the vertical variable and trigonometric polynomials in the horizontal variables, two different collocation schemes are derived. A result of Sloan [J.Approx Theory, 39:97-117,1983] on non-polynomial interpolation yields both converge and algebraic convergence rates depending on the smoothness of the inhomogeneity and the source of both schemes. Using one collocation scheme we present numerical results in dimension two. We further present an optimization technique of the vertical transform process, when the height of the obstacle is small compared to the finite height of the ocean, which makes computation in dimension three possible. If several scatters are present in the waveguide, this discretization technique leads to one computational domain containing all scatterers. For a three dimensional waveguide, we reformulate the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation as a coupled system in an union of several boxes, each containing one part of the scatter

Efficient Techniques for Wave-based Sound Propagation in Interactive Applications

Sound propagation techniques model the effect of the environment on sound waves and predict their behavior from point of emission at the source to the final point of arrival at the listener. Sound is a pressure wave produced by mechanical vibration of a surface that propagates through a medium such as air or water, and the problem of sound propagation can be formulated mathematically as a second-order partial differential equation called the wave equation. Accurate techniques based on solving the wave equation, also called the wave-based techniques, are too expensive computationally and memory-wise. Therefore, these techniques face many challenges in terms of their applicability in interactive applications including sound propagation in large environments, time-varying source and listener directivity, and high simulation cost for mid-frequencies. In this dissertation, we propose a set of efficient wave-based sound propagation techniques that solve these three challenges and enable the use of wave-based sound propagation in interactive applications. Firstly, we propose a novel equivalent source technique for interactive wave-based sound propagation in large scenes spanning hundreds of meters. It is based on the equivalent source theory used for solving radiation and scattering problems in acoustics and electromagnetics. Instead of using a volumetric or surface-based approach, this technique takes an object-centric approach to sound propagation. The proposed equivalent source technique generates realistic acoustic effects and takes orders of magnitude less runtime memory compared to prior wave-based techniques. Secondly, we present an efficient framework for handling time-varying source and listener directivity for interactive wave-based sound propagation. The source directivity is represented as a linear combination of elementary spherical harmonic sources. This spherical harmonic-based representation of source directivity can support analytical, data-driven, rotating or time-varying directivity function at runtime. Unlike previous approaches, the listener directivity approach can be used to compute spatial audio (3D audio) for a moving, rotating listener at interactive rates. Lastly, we propose an efficient GPU-based time-domain solver for the wave equation that enables wave simulation up to the mid-frequency range in tens of minutes on a desktop computer. It is demonstrated that by carefully mapping all the components of the wave simulator to match the parallel processing capabilities of the graphics processors, significant improvement in performance can be achieved compared to the CPU-based simulators, while maintaining numerical accuracy. We validate these techniques with offline numerical simulations and measured data recorded in an outdoor scene. We present results of preliminary user evaluations conducted to study the impact of these techniques on user's immersion in virtual environment. We have integrated these techniques with the Half-Life 2 game engine, Oculus Rift head-mounted display, and Xbox game controller to enable users to experience high-quality acoustics effects and spatial audio in the virtual environment.Doctor of Philosoph