FDEMtools: a MATLAB package for FDEM data inversion

Abstract: Electromagnetic induction surveys are among the most popular techniques for non-destructive investigation of soil properties in order to detect the presence of either ground inhomogeneities or of particular substances. This work introduces a MATLAB package for the inversion of electromagnetic data collected by a ground conductivity meter. Based on a nonlinear forward model used to describe the interaction between an electromagnetic field and the soil, the software reconstructs either the electrical conductivity or the magnetic permeability of the soil with respect to depth, by a regularized damped Gauss-Newton method. The regularization part of the algorithm is based on a low-rank approximation of the Jacobian of the nonlinear model. Both the relaxation parameter and the regularization parameter are chosen by automatic procedures. The package allows the user to experiment with synthetic data sets and different regularization strategies, in order to compare them and draw conclusions.