Imaging perfectly conducting objects as support of induced currents: Kirchhoff approximation and frequency diversity

Abstract

The problem of determining the shape of perfectly conducting objects from knowledge of the scattered electric field is considered. The formulation of the problem accommodates the nature of the distribution of the induced surface current density. Thus, as the unknown representing the object's contour, a single layer distribution is chosen so that the contour of the scatterer is described by its support. The nonlinear unknown-data mapping is then linearized by means of the Kirchhoff approximation, and the problem is recast as the inversion of a linear operator acting on a distribution space. An extension of the singular value decomposition approach to solve the linearized problem is provided and numerical results are presented.