A comparative study of Filon-type rules
for oscillatory integrals
Abstract.
Our aim is to answer the following question: “Among the Filon-type methods for computing oscillatory integrals, which one is the most efficient in practice?”. We first discuss why we should seek the answer among the family of Filon-Clenshaw-Curtis rules. A theoretical analysis accompanied by a set of numerical experiments reveals that the plain Filon-Clenshaw-Curtis rules reach a given accuracy faster than the (adaptive) extended Filon-Clenshaw-Curtis rules. The comparison is based on the CPU run-time for certain wave numbers (medium and large).
Key words and phrases:
oscillatory integral, Filon-Clenshaw-Curtis rule, extended FCC rule, adaptive FCC+ rule.2005 Mathematics Subject Classification:
65D32, 65Y201. Introduction
Consider the oscillatory integral
(1) |
where
(2) |
where
(3) |
where
Certainly, accuracy of a Filon-type method is proportional to the accuracy of the corresponding polynomial approximation because
(4) |
In practice, what is the best choice of
In general, Lagrange interpolation at arbitrary points is rather costly. However, in [6], a rapid and stable construction method is proposed based on the fast multipole method (FMM) of [8]. Instead of an arbitrary set of interpolation points, however, one prefers roots or extrema of orthogonal polynomials and utilize FFT for better performance. Among several kinds of orthogonal polynomials, Chebyshev polynomials are often used mainly because their roots and extrema are in the most simple and explicit forms.
For fast computing the moments, one prefers polynomials which satisfy a recurrence relation. Then the moments can be computed recursively with few computational cost. Orthogonal polynomials not only can be constructed efficiently by FFT, but also they satisfy three-term recurrence relations. Assume that
(5) |
where
(6) |
On the other hand, the asymptotic expansion of the oscillatory integral
(7) |
for some integer
(8) |
(see, e.g., [11]). Therefore, not only the accuracy of the interpolation, i.e.
The conditions (7) implies an example of Hermite-Birkhoff interpolation, which construction rarely utilizes fast algorithms like FFT or FMM. Interpolation at the Clenshaw-Curtis points
Therefore, without doubt, Filon-Clenshaw-Curtis (FCC) rules and their extensions are the most efficient Filon-type rules for computing the oscillatory integral (1). Extended FCC (FCC+) rules and their adaptive versions can be constructed efficiently by the algorithms of [15] and [14], respectively. To the best of our knowledge, they are the most efficient algorithms for constructing the FCC+ and adaptive FCC+ rules so far.
In comparison with the algorithm of [5] for constructing the FCC rules, the algorithms of [15] and [14] are more complex. This difference in the computational costs may be negligible when the maximum order of derivatives
In this paper, we carry out a set of numerical experiments to compare efficiency of FCC, FFC+, and adaptive FCC+. Actually, we are interested in the CPU run-time to achieve a specific accuracy. We apply these three classes of rules to a set of oscillatory integrals with different regularity characteristics. Since FCC is less complex than the other rules, one can use more interpolation points for the same computational effort as (adaptive) FCC+.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we carry out a set of numerical experiments in order to compare the efficiency of the FCC and the FCC+ rules. In Section 3, the same is done for the FCC and the adaptive FCC+ rules. We also modify Theorem 2.2 of [14] and give a more practical error bound for the adaptive FCC+ rules that is explicit in
2. FCC vs FCC+
In this section, we compare the efficiency of the FCC and FCC+ rules. In contrast to the common ideas in the literature, we see that the FCC+ rules have no advantages over the plain FCC rules in practice. At first, we give a brief review of the FCC+ rules (see [7, 15]).
2.1. A review of the FCC+ rules
The (
(9) |
where
(10a) | ||||
(10b) |
Then, the asymptotic error of the rule will be
(11) |
see, e.g., [11].
An important advantage of the FCC rules over the FCC+ ones is that there are error estimates for the FCC rules, which are applicable even if
In [7], an efficient algorithm is proposed for constructing the FCC+ rule (9) that can be implemented by
2.2. The race for convergence speed
Error estimate (11) turns out that for a fixed
In this section, we show that such claims are in doubt in practice. Although, it may be required in some applications to compute
Even if we compute the number of flops for construction of the two rules exactly, error estimates (specially for the FCC+ rules) are not so sharp that the accuracy of the rules can be estimated a priori for a given

In the following, we apply FCC and FCC+ to a set of oscillatory integrals (1), covering wave numbers from moderate to quite large values. We try to have at least one sample of the amplitude function in each class of
Experiment 1.
Let
Although, the derivatives of

Experiment 2.
The amplitude function


Experiment 3.
In order to see if the above experimental results hold for other amplitude functions
Here,
3. FCC vs Adaptive FCC+
In this section, we compare the efficiency in practice of the FCC and the adaptive FCC+ rules of [14]. An adaptive FCC+ rule and its corresponding FCC+ rule always have the same asymptotic order while the former is derivative-free and less complex. We will see, however, that in the race to achieve a given accuracy, the adaptive FCC+ rules are still overtaken by the corresponding FCC rules. At first, we give a brief review of [14], where the concept of adaptive FCC+ rules has been introduced for the first time.
3.1. A review of the adaptive FCC+ rules
The (
(12) |
where
(13) |
As mentioned above, an adaptive FCC+ rule preserves the asymptotic order of the corresponding FCC+ rule. More precisely, we have the following result proved in [14]:
Theorem 1.
Assume that
(14) |
as
In contrast to the FCC+ rules, there are error bounds for the adaptive FCC+ rules that are explicit in all the three parameters
Corollary 2.
Assume that
(15) |
for all
Proof.
In [14], it was shown numerically that, adaptive FCC+ is always more efficient than FCC+. However, our numerical experiments in the next section show that it is still overtaken by FCC is the race to achieve a given accuracy.




3.2. The race for convergence speed
In this section, we repeat the numerical experiments of Section 2.2, now by the adaptive FCC+ instead of the FCC+ rules. The same discussion is applicable here, too. In Fig. 5–Fig. 8, we compare convergence rates of the adaptive FCC+ rules and the corresponding FCC rules. The results are the same as in Fig. 1–Fig. 4, and FCC is always the winner.
4. Other advantages of FCC rules
The FCC rules have further advantages over the FCC+ and adaptive FCC+ rules. In this section, we account some of them.
-
(1)
Composite FCC rules can readily be developed [4] while the composite versions of the (adaptive) FCC+ rules require many data within the integration interval. In the case of FCC+ rules, one should compute derivatives of the amplitude function at some (or many) internal points in addition to the endpoints. This can increase the computational cost most largely.
-
(2)
One can apply composite FCC rules with suitably graded meshes and treat oscillatory integrals with algebraic or logarithmic endpoint singularities [4]. Trying to apply this idea to the FCC+ rules, one should compute derivatives of the amplitude function at some (or many) points clustered near the singular endpoint. In the case of adaptive FCC+ rules, we will have a bunch of points clustered near the endpoints of each subinterval. Thus, in the vicinity of the singular endpoint, the density of the points may become so high that rounding error pollutes the total accuracy.
-
(3)
When estimating the computational cost of the FCC+ rules in [15], it is assumed that the derivatives of the amplitude function have been precalculated. This is also the case in the numerical experiments of Section 2.2. However, in many situations it is impossible or awkward to differentiate manually [10]. It is well-known that computing derivatives (especially of high-order) by finite differences is subject to cancellation. For that reason, many special numerical differentiation methods has been developed, e.g. automatic differentiation [9, 18, 19], complex and multicomplex step differentiation [12, 16, 17], differentiation rules base on Cauchy integrals [2, 1], etc. Thus, computing the derivatives is not necessarily a trivial task and imposes an extra computational cost.
-
(4)
One can study the stability of the FCC rules [13], but such study can be sophisticated for (adaptive) FCC+ rules.
5. Conclusions
In this work, we carried out a benchmark of numerical experiments and observed that the (adaptive) FCC+ rules are most often overtaken by the plain FCC rules in the speed race to achieve a given accuracy. Availability of error estimates when the amplitude function is of confined regularity, capability to develop efficient composite rules, availability of a stability analysis, and being derivative-free are other features that make the FCC rules the most-efficient decisive-choice ones among other Filon-type methods for oscillatory integrals (1).
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