Numerical experiments on the condition number of the interpolation matrices for radial basis functions

Through numerical experiments, we examine the condition numbers of the interpolation matrix for many species of radial basis functions (RBFs), mostly on uniform grids. For most RBF species that give infinite order accuracy when interpolating smooth f(x)—Gaussians, sech's and Inverse Quadratics—the condition number κ(α,N) rapidly asymptotes to a limit that is independent of N and depends only on α, the inverse width relative to the grid spacing. Multiquadrics are an exception in that the condition number for fixed α grows as N2. For all four, there is growth proportional to an exponential of 1/α (1/α2 for Gaussians). For splines and thin-plate splines, which contain no width parameter, the condition numbers grows asymptotically as a power of N—a large power as the order of the RBF increases. Random grids typically increase the condition number (for fixed RBF width) by orders of magnitude. The quasi-random, low discrepancy Halton grid may, however, have a lower condition number than a uniform grid of the same size.