We present in this paper a novel numerical reconstruction method for solving a 3D coefficient inverse problem with scattering data generated by a single direction of the incident plane wave. This inverse problem is well-known to be a highly nonlinear and ill-posed problem. Therefore, optimization-based reconstruction methods for solving this problem would typically suffer from the local-minima trapping and require strong a priori information of the solution. To avoid these problems, in our numerical method, we aim to construct a cost functional with a globally strictly convex property, whose minimizer can provide a good approximation for the exact solution of the inverse problem. The key ingredients for the construction of such functional are an integro-differential formulation of the inverse problem and a Carleman weight function. Under a (partial) finite difference approximation, the global strict convexity is proven using the tool of Carleman estimates. The global convergence of the gradient projection method to the exact solution is proven as well. We demonstrate the efficiency of our reconstruction method via a numerical study of experimental backscatter data for buried objects.

The goal of this paper is to reconstruct spatially distributed dielectric constants from complexvalued scattered wave field by solving a 3D coefficient inverse problem for the Helmholtz equation at multi-frequencies. The data are generated by only a single direction of the incident plane wave. To solve this inverse problem, a globally convergent algorithm is analytically developed. We prove that this algorithm provides a good approximation for the exact coefficient without any a priori knowledge of any point in a small neighborhood of that coefficient. This is the main advantage of our method, compared with classical approaches using optimization schemes. Numerical results are presented for both computationally simulated data and experimental data. Potential applications of this problem are in detection and identification of explosive-like targets.

We analyze in this paper the performance of a newly developed globally convergent numerical method for a coefficient inverse problem for the case of multi-frequency experimental backscatter data associated to a single incident wave. These data were collected using a microwave scattering facility at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The challenges for the inverse problem under the consideration are not only from its high nonlinearity and severe ill-posedness but also from the facts that the amount of the measured data is minimal and that these raw data are contaminated by a significant amount of noise, due to a non-ideal experimental setup. This setup is motivated by our target application in detecting and identifying explosives. We show in this paper how the raw data can be preprocessed and successfully inverted using our inversion method. More precisely, we are able to reconstruct the dielectric constants and the locations of the scattering objects with a good accuracy, without using any advanced a priori knowledge of their physical and geometrical properties.

This paper is concerned with the numerical solution to a 3D coefficient inverse problem for buried objects with multi-frequency experimental data. The measured data, which are associated with a single direction of an incident plane wave, are backscatter data for targets buried in a sandbox. These raw scattering data were collected using a microwave scattering facility at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We develop a data preprocessing procedure and exploit a newly developed globally convergent inversion method for solving the inverse problem with these preprocessed data. It is shown that dielectric constants of the buried targets as well as their locations are reconstructed with a very good accuracy. We also prove a new analytical result which rigorously justifies an important step of the so-called "data propagation" procedure.

Transverse magnetic (TM) scattering of an electromagnetic wave from a periodic dielectric diffraction grating can mathematically be described by a volume integral equation. This volume integral equation, however, in general fails to feature a weakly singular integral operator. Nevertheless, after a suitable periodization, the involved integral operator can be efficiently evaluated on trigonometric polynomials using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and iterative methods can be used to solve the integral equation. Using Fredholm theory, we prove that a trigonometric Galerkin discretization applied to the periodized integral equation converges with optimal order to the solution of the scattering problem. The main advantage of this FFT-based discretization scheme is that the resulting numerical method is particularly easy to implement, avoiding for instance the need to evaluate quasiperiodic Green's functions.