Reduced-order modeling for electromagnetic inverse problems: a layered medium benchmark

We study reduced-order modeling for inverse problems in layered media, focusing on the recovery of impedance profiles from time-domain measurements. Using the Goupillaud structure, we formulate the forward problem as a discrete dynamical system and introduce a ROM-based objective defined at the level of reduced operators. Through numerical experiments on a 5-layer medium under various structured perturbations, we compare the ROM-based objective with a classical data misfit. The results show that the ROM-based inversion provides a more favorable reconstruction in the clean setting and in certain structured perturbation regimes, while remaining consistently competitive with the classical approach across all cases considered.