On the Improvement of the Performance of Inexpensive Electromagnetic Skins by Means of an Inverse Source Design Approach

A new methodology for the improvement of the performance of inexpensive static passive electromagnetic skins (SP-EMSs) is presented. The proposed approach leverages on the non-uniqueness of the inverse source problem associated to the SP-EMS design by decomposing the induced surface current into pre-image (PI) and null-space (NS) components. Successively, the unknown EMS layout and NS expansion coefficients are determined by means of an alternate minimization of a suitable cost function. This latter quantifies the mismatch between the ideal surface current, which radiates the user-defined target field, and that actually induced on the EMS layout. Results from a representative set of numerical experiments, concerned with the design of EMSs reflecting pencil-beam as well as contoured target patterns, are reported to assess the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving the performance of inexpensive EMS realizations. The measurements on an EMS prototype, featuring a conductive ink pattern printed on a standard paper substrate, are also shown to prove the reliability of the synthesis process.