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This research addresses spectral bias in Fourier Neural Operators by introducing a Spectral-Spatial Residual Learning framework to better capture high-frequency interference patterns in underwater acoustic data. The proposed coarse-to-fine architecture successfully improves prediction accuracy over standard baselines while preserving the millisecond-level inference speeds required for real-time ocean applications. This advancement represents a significant step forward in optimizing neural operator architectures for complex physical simulation tasks.
Mitigating Spectral Bias in Neural Operators for Underwater Transmission Loss Prediction
arXiv:2608.18141v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Predicting underwater acoustic transmission loss rapidly and accurately is crucial for real-time ocean acoustic applications. While Fourier Neural Operators (FNO) have emerged as powerful surrogate models due to their global receptive fields, they suffer from spectral bias. The frequency truncation mechanism in FNO filters out high-frequency components, resulting in over-smoothed predictions that fail to capture fine-grained interference patterns. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a Spectral-Spatial Residual Learning (S2RL) framework. S2RL decomposes the prediction task into a coarse-to-fine process: a spectral Global Propagator first generates a globally consistent prediction, and a spatial Local Refiner subsequently recovers the high-frequency residuals. Experimental results on a South China Sea dataset show that the proposed method significantly outperforms FNO baselines while maintaining millisecond-level inference speeds.
Abstract:Predicting underwater acoustic transmission loss rapidly and accurately is crucial for real-time ocean acoustic applications. While Fourier Neural Operators (FNO) have emerged as powerful surrogate models due to their global receptive fields, they suffer from spectral bias. The frequency truncation mechanism in FNO filters out high-frequency components, resulting in over-smoothed predictions that fail to capture fine-grained interference patterns. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a Spectral-Spatial Residual Learning (S2RL) framework. S2RL decomposes the prediction task into a coarse-to-fine process: a spectral Global Propagator first generates a globally consistent prediction, and a spatial Local Refiner subsequently recovers the high-frequency residuals. Experimental results on a South China Sea dataset show that the proposed method significantly outperforms FNO baselines while maintaining millisecond-level inference speeds.
Sound (cs.SD); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2608.18141 [cs.SD]
(or arXiv:2608.18141v1 [cs.SD] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.18141 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 216 words
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