Shape reconstruction of metallic objects from intensity scattered field data only

Area of Science:

• Electromagnetics and Wave Propagation
• Computational Electromagnetics
• Inverse Problems

Background:

• Inverse scattering problems typically require both amplitude and phase information of the scattered field.
• Reconstructing objects from limited field data is a significant challenge in electromagnetics.
• Existing phase retrieval techniques are often complex and computationally intensive.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a method for reconstructing the shape of a metallic planar obstacle using only the amplitude information of the scattered field.
• To investigate the feasibility of applying phase retrieval techniques from antenna diagnostics to inverse scattering problems.
• To address the challenge of shape reconstruction with limited measurement data.

Main Methods:

• Formulating the inverse scattering problem under the physical optics approximation.
• Exploiting the quadratic nature of the resulting phase retrieval problem.
• Utilizing amplitude information of the scattered field from two near-zone measurement planes.
• Applying established phase retrieval techniques for antenna diagnostics.

Main Results:

• Successfully reconstructed the shape of a metallic planar obstacle using only amplitude data.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed approach through simulations with synthetic data.
• Showcased the effectiveness of applying antenna diagnostic phase retrieval methods to inverse scattering.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method enables metallic obstacle shape reconstruction from limited amplitude-only scattered field data.
• The physical optics approximation and quadratic phase retrieval formulation are effective for this inverse scattering problem.
• This approach offers a promising alternative for scenarios where full scattered field data is unavailable.