Hi all,
I recently encountered a cumbersome limitation with our current
UnivariateInterpolator interface. It is a simple interface that defines
only one method:
public interface UnivariateInterpolator {
UnivariateFunction interpolate(double xval[], double yval[]);
}
I needed three different features which are not compatible with this
interface.
1) the function values are vectorial, not scalar
2) the interpolation should use values and also derivatives at sample
points if provided
3) it should be possible in the same interpolation to provide
derivatives at some points and no derivatives at other points
(or derivatives with different orders)
I thought about adding a UnivariateVectorInterpolator with an API
similar to the existing one, but finally thought it would be really
awkward. As the function is a vector function, both xval and yVal should
have a second dimension. As derivatives should be added, the yVal
array should in fact have a third dimension. As some derivatives should
be optional, some rows of yVal should be allowed to be null. At this
step, I considered packing everything in two arrays was not the way to go.
So I designed something different. For now, I have implemented it in
Orekit but I really think it does belong to [math] scope, so I would
like to commit it there. The code is available here:
<https://www.orekit.org/forge/projects/orekit/repository/revisions/e0f647bd7cd1450bd361dfcaf9530892c285dc47/entry/src/main/java/org/orekit/utils/HermiteInterpolator.java>.
The design is based on building the interpolator iteratively. At
construction, it is empty, then successive calls to addSamplePoint are
made, one call for each points. The signature of the method is:
public void addSamplePoint(final double x, final double[] ... value);
The user can provide only one array for some points, or two arrays if
first derivatives are available for this point, or three arrays is
second derivative is also available and so on. The elements of each
array correspond to the vectorial components of the function. Users can
mix freely calls with and without derivatives.
At the end, the user can get the value of the function or its first
derivative at a some abscissa without building the intermediate function
or he can prefer to build this function and retrieve it as a polynomial
(see methods value, derivative and getPolynomial). In fact, it is
possible to add some points, interpolate on these points, add new
points, and interpolate again using all the points.
So I would like to commit this class. However, I'm not sure if it should
be simply added to the analysis.interpolation package as is, of if the
API should be modified. I don't know either if we should set a top level
interface for this or not.
What do you think ?
best regards,
Luc
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
