Machine Learning Based Forward Solver: An Automatic Framework in gprMax
This work addresses the computational bottleneck for researchers and engineers in GPR applications, though it is incremental as it adapts existing ML techniques to a specific domain.
The authors tackled the computational demands of simulating ground-penetrating radar (GPR) problems by developing an automatic framework to generate machine learning-based forward solvers, achieving near-real-time performance with a novel training method that combines predictive dimensionality reduction and large datasets from FDTD simulations.
General full-wave electromagnetic solvers, such as those utilizing the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, are computationally demanding for simulating practical GPR problems. We explore the performance of a near-real-time, forward modeling approach for GPR that is based on a machine learning (ML) architecture. To ease the process, we have developed a framework that is capable of generating these ML-based forward solvers automatically. The framework uses an innovative training method that combines a predictive dimensionality reduction technique and a large data set of modeled GPR responses from our FDTD simulation software, gprMax. The forward solver is parameterized for a specific GPR application, but the framework can be extended in a straightforward manner to different electromagnetic problems.