A Vectorial Description of Electromagnetic Scattering by Large Bodies of Spherical Shape

Abstract

We present a new method to obtain a vectorial solution of the Helmholtz equation for large homogeneous scatterers having a cylindrical symmetry and an approximately spherical shape. Limitations of the method for arbitrarily shaped particles are discussed.     

Physics‐based preconditioner for iterative algorithms in multi‐scatterer and multi‐boundary method of moments formulations

An efficient method to solve electromagnetic scattering problems involving several metallic scatterers or bodies composed of dielectric and metallic regions is proposed. So far, the method of moments has successfully been applied to large arrays of identical scatterers when it was combined with preconditioned iterative algorithms to solve for the linear system of equations. Here, the method is generalized to geometries that are composed of several metallic elements of different shapes and sizes, and also to scatterers that are composed of metallic and dielectric regions. The method uses in its core an iterative algorithm, preferably the transpose‐free quasi‐minimum residual (TFQMR) algorithm, and a block diagonal Jacobi preconditioner. For best performance, the blocks for the preconditioner are chosen according to individual scatterers or groups of scatterers for the array case, and according to the electric and magnetic current basis functions for dielectric/metallic scatterers. The iterative procedure converges quickly for an optimally chosen preconditioner, and is robust even for a non‐optimal preconditioner. Reported run times are compared to run times of an efficiently programmed LU factorization, and are shown to be significantly lower. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combined fictitious-sources-scattering-matrix method

We describe a way to combine the method of fictitious sources and the scattering-matrix method. The resulting method presents concurrently the advantages of these two rigorous methods. It is able to solve efficiently electromagnetic problems in which the structure is made up of a jacket containing an arbitrary set of scatterers. The method is described in a two-dimensional case, but the basic ideas could be easily extended to three-dimensional cases.     

Transient source current formulation for the analysis of arbitrarily shaped dielectric/conducting composite structures

In this paper, a novel time-domain integral equation (TDIE) approach is presented to analyze the transient electromagnetic response from three-dimensional dielectric/conducting composite structures. The composite bodies with different materials and conductor structures are considered as autonomous scattering objects. The scattered electromagnetic field is derived by superposition of the individual scatterers. The principal method is based on the application of electric and magnetic field boundary conditions on the surfaces of dielectric and conducting objects while considering the electric currents as unknowns. Triangular patches as well as quadrangular patches model the surfaces of the combined structure. The scattered electromagnetic fields inside and outside the combined structure depend only on the electric surface currents. This improves the post-processing time and complexity as compared with other methods using both equivalent electric and magnetic surface currents. To solve the resultant integral equations, the implicit method of moments is used. In our approach, the internal fields are independent of external currents and vice-versa, reducing the number of the matrix elements by considering them as zero.     

APPLICATION OF WAVELETS ON THE INTERVAL TO NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF INTEGRAL EQUATIONS IN ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING PROBLEMS

The wavelet expansions on the interval are employed for solving the problems of the electromagnetic (EM) scattering from two-dimensional (2-D) conducting objects. The arbitrary configurations of scatterers are modeled using the boundary element method (BEM). By using the wavelets on the interval as basis and test functions, a sparse matrix equation is generated from the integral equation under study. The resulted sparse matrix equation allows the use of sparse matrix solvers or multi-level iterations for rapid solution. The utilization of wavelets on the interval circumvents the difficulties in the application of the wavelets on the real line to finite interval problems, and has no periodicity constraint to the unknown function that is usually imposed by periodic wavelets. Numerical examples are provided and compared with the previously published data or other methods. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

自适应Chirplet信号分解用于ISAR目标三维转动检测

当ISAR目标作复杂的三维转动时,目标上各散射点的相位误差将与它们在目标上所处的位置有关,传统的相位聚焦方法难以采用统一的相位校正函数来进行补偿。为解决此问题,论文提出了一种基于自适应Chirplet信号分解的ISAR目标三维转动检测方法,该方法使用自适应Chirplet信号分解的快速算法来估计散射点子回波的相位信息,并根据两个散射点相位之间的非线性度来判断目标是否存在三维转动,从而只选择那些仅具有二维转动的数据段进行成像。仿真实验结果表明了它的有效性。     

Numerical expansion-iterative method for analysis of integral equation models arising in one- and two-dimensional electromagnetic scattering

Most integral equations of the first kind are ill-posed, and obtaining their numerical solution needs often to solve a linear system of algebraic equations of large condition number. So, solving this system may be difficult or impossible. Since many problems in one- and two-dimensional scattering from perfectly conducting bodies can be modeled by Fredholm integral equations of the first kind, this paper presents an effective numerical expansion-iterative method for solving them. This method is based on vector forms of block-pulse functions. By using this approach, solving the first kind integral equation reduces to solve a recurrence relation. The approximate solution is most easily produced iteratively via the recurrence relation. Therefore, computing the numerical solution does not need to directly solve any linear system of algebraic equations and to use any matrix inversion. Also, the method practically transforms solving of the first kind Fredholm integral equation which is inherently ill-posed into solving second kind Fredholm integral equation. Another advantage is low cost of setting up the equations without applying any projection method such as collocation, Galerkin, etc. To show convergence and stability of the method, some computable error bounds are obtained. Test problems are provided to illustrate its accuracy and computational efficiency, and some practical one- and two-dimensional scatterers are analyzed by it.     

Skin color modeling using the radiative transfer equation solved by the auxiliary function method

The auxiliary function method is an efficient technique for solving the radiative tranfer equation without adding any assumption and was applied until now only for theoretical stratified media. The first application (to our knowledge) of the method to a real case, the human skin, is presented. This makes it possible to validate the method by comparing model results with experimental reflectance spectra of real skin. An excellent agreement is obtained for a multilayer model of the skin made of 22 sublayers and taking into account the anisotropic phase function of the scatterers. Thus there is the opportunity to develop interest in such models by quantitatively evaluating the influence of the parameters commonly used in the literature that modify skin color, such as the concentration of the scatterers and the thickness of each sublayer.     

Remote sensing of penetrable objects buried beneath two-dimensional random rough surfaces by use of the Mueller matrix elements

The modified Mueller matrix elements for electromagnetic scattering from penetrable objects buried under two-dimensional random rough surfaces are investigated. This matrix relates the incident to the scattered waves, and it contains different combinations of the fully polarimetric scattering matrix elements. The statistical average of each Mueller matrix element is computed on the basis of the Monte Carlo simulations by exploiting the speed of the three-dimensional steepest-descent fast multipole method. The numerical results clearly show that relying only on the co-polarized or the cross-polarized intensities or both (i.e., vv, hh, vh, and hv) is not sufficient for sensing the buried objects. However, examining all 16 Mueller matrix elements significantly increases the possibility of detecting these objects. This technique can be used in remote sensing of scatterers buried beneath the rough ground.     

The Time-Marching Method of Fundamental Solutions for Multi-Dimensional Telegraph Equations

The telegraph equations are solved by using the meshless numerical method called the time-marching method of fundamental solutions (TMMFS) in this paper. The present method is based on the method of fundamental solutions, the method of particular solutions and the Houbolt finite difference scheme. The TMMFS is a meshless numerical method, and has the advantages of no mesh building and numerical quadrature. Therefore in this study we eventually solved the multi-dimensional telegraph equation problems in irregular domain. There are totally six numerical examples demonstrated, in order they are one-dimensional telegraph equation, one-dimensional non-decaying telegraph problem, two-dimensional telegraph equation in irregular domain, three-dimensional telegraph problem in cubic domain, three-dimensional telegraph equation in irregular domain and three-dimensional fixed boundary telegraph problem in irregular domain. All numerical results have shown good efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm, thus demonstrated the present meshless numerical method of the TMMFS is applicable for further applications in solving the multi-dimensional telegraph equation in irregular domain.     

Real and complex Doppler effects in lossy media

The theory of the Doppler effect in the presence of lossy media and moving scatterers is investigated. Essentially two kinds of phenomena emerge, which are not distinguishable in the conventional case of lossless media. When the scatterers move uniformly, or the equation of motion involves a slowly varying velocity, it is shown that propagation in lossy media involves complex Doppler effects. The complications introduced by the received complex frequency signal are discussed. It is shown that spectrum broadening occurs, and that, in certain cases, by using judiciously chosen temporal filters, the spectral degradation of the received signal can be counteracted. The second class of phenomena is associated with periodic and harmonic motion, when the scatterer is vibrating around a fixed location. In this case the incident wave is frequency modulated by the moving scatterer, giving rise to sidebands of real frequencies.     

Three-dimensional boundary element analysis of electromagnetic wave scattering by penetrable bodies

A frequency domain boundary element methodology of solving three dimensional electromagnetic wave scattering problems by dielectric particles is reported. The method utilizes a computationally attractive surface integral equation containing only weakly and strongly singular integrals in the contrast to most formulations involving not only strongly singular but hypersingular integrals as well. The main advantage of this integral equation is the fact that its strongly singular part is similar to the one appearing in the corresponding integral equation of dynamic elasticity. Thus, well known advanced integration techniques used successfully in elastic scattering problems can be directly applied to the present analysis. Both continuous and discontinuous quadratic elements are employed in order to accurately treat dielectric scatterers with smooth and piecewise smooth boundaries. Numerical examples dealing with three dimensional electromagnetic wave scattering problems demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed boundary element formulation.     

Polarized pulse waves in random discrete scatterers

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of polarization for imaging objects in a cluttered environment. Examples are optical imaging through clouds, optical detection of objects in a biological medium, and microwave detection of objects in clutter. We extend previous studies of continuous-wave scattering to pulse-polarization scattering in discrete scatterers. We solve the time-dependent vector radiative transfer equation for a plane-parallel medium by using Mie scattering and the discrete ordinates method. The time-dependent degree of polarization and cross-polarization discrimination are calculated and verify the advantages of circular over linear polarization in maintaining greater copolarized components rather than cross-polarized components.     

A three-dimensional shape optimization for transient acoustic scattering problems using the time-domain boundary element method

We develop a three-dimensional shape optimization (SO) framework for the wave equation with taking the unsteadiness into account. Resorting to the adjoint variable method, we derive the shape derivative (SD) with respect to a deformation (perturbation) of an arbitrary point on the target surface of acoustic scatterers. Successively, we represent the target surface with non-uniform rational B-spline patches and then discretize the SD in term of the associated control points (CPs), which are useful for manipulating a surface. To solve both the primary and adjoint problems, we apply the time-domain boundary element method (TDBEM) because it is the most appropriate when the analysis domain is the ambient air and thus infinitely large. The issues of the severe computational cost and instability of the TDBEM are resolved by exploiting the fast and stable TDBEM proposed by the present authors. Instead, since the TDBEM is mesh-based and employs the piecewise-constant element for space, we introduce some approximations in evaluating the discretized SD from the two solutions of TDBEM. By regarding the evaluation scheme as the computation of the gradient of the objective functional, given as the summation of the absolute value of the sound pressure over the predefined observation points, we can solve SO problems with a gradient-based non-linear optimization solver. To assess the developed SO system, we performed several numerical experiments from the perspective of verification and application with satisfactory results.     

Depolarization and blurring of optical images by biological tissue

We present a study of the image blurring and depolarization resulting from the transmission of a narrow beam of light through a continuous random medium. We investigate the dependence of image quality degradation and of depolarization on optical thickness, correlation length of the inhomogeneities, and incident polarization state. This is done numerically with a Monte Carlo method based on a transport equation that takes into account polarization of light. We compare our results with those for transport in media with discrete spherical scatterers. We show that depolarization effects are different in these two models of biological tissue.     

Multi-parameter acoustic imaging of uniform objects in inhomogeneous soft tissue

The problem studied in this paper is ultrasound image reconstruction from frequency-domain measurements of the scattered field from an object with contrast in attenuation and sound speed. The case in which the object has uniform but unknown contrast in these properties relative to the background is considered. Background clutter is taken into account in a physically realistic manner by considering an exact scattering model for randomly located small scatterers that vary in sound speed. The resulting statistical characteristics of the interference are incorporated into the imaging solution, which includes application of a total-variation minimization-based approach in which the relative effect of perturbation in sound speed to attenuation is included as a parameter. Convex optimization methods provide the basis for the reconstruction algorithm. Numerical data for inversion examples are generated by solving the discretized Lippman-Schwinger equation for the object and speckle-forming scatterers in the background. A statistical model based on the Born approximation is used for reconstruction of the object profile. Results are presented for a two-dimensional problem in terms of classification performance and compared with minimum-l2-norm reconstruction. Classification using the proposed method is shown to be robust down to a signal-to-clutter ratio of less than 1 dB.     

Inverse design of anti-reflection coatings using the nonlinear approximate inverse

We consider a multi-frequency inverse scattering problem arising in the design of anti-reflection coatings. These thin films are deposited onto photovoltaic solar cells to enhance their performance. The objective is to determine the space-dependent refractive index in an inhomogeneous optical layer from the reflection coefficients at the surface. The relevant model yields a boundary value problem for the one-dimensional (1D) Helmholtz equation, which we formulate as an equivalent integral equation. The resulting inverse problem is nonlinear and ill-posed. We consider a series expansion of the field depending on the order of nonlinearity of the model. The first-order solution is obtained by using the Born approximation which is valid for weak scattering. Stronger scatterers are sought by considering a nonlinearity of higher order. The mathematical and numerical framework is provided by the (noniterative) method of the approximate inverse (AI) for nonlinear inverse problems. Numerical results are presented to attest the efficiency and stability of the method.     

Ultrasound-modulated optical tomography: recovery of amplitude of vibration in the insonified region from boundary measurement of light correlation

We address a certain inverse problem in ultrasound-modulated optical tomography: the recovery of the amplitude of vibration of scatterers [p(r)] in the ultrasound focal volume in a diffusive object from boundary measurement of the modulation depth (M) of the amplitude autocorrelation of light [φ(r,τ)] traversing through it. Since M is dependent on the stiffness of the material, this is the precursor to elasticity imaging. The propagation of φ(r,τ) is described by a diffusion equation from which we have derived a nonlinear perturbation equation connecting p(r) and refractive index modulation [Δn(r)] in the region of interest to M measured on the boundary. The nonlinear perturbation equation and its approximate linear counterpart are solved for the recovery of p(r). The numerical results reveal regions of different stiffness, proving that the present method recovers p(r) with reasonable quantitative accuracy and spatial resolution.     

Two-point laser-Doppler measurements of turbulence on the basis of the photoshift of scattered mie waves

The theory of the scattering of Mie waves is used to analyze and calculate the metrological characteristics of laser-Doppler systems for measuring the three-dimensional structure of turbulence. The signal formed in these systems is due to interference in the scattering of waves from different particles crossing spatially separated regions in which two laser beams are focused. The optimum parameters of the scatterers and optical systems are calculated for specific applications. Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 6, pp. 39–43, June, 1997.