On the Effects of the Electromagnetic Source Modeling in the Iterative Multiscaling Method

The validation against experimental data is a fundamental step in the assessment of the effectiveness of a microwave imaging algorithm. It is aimed at pointing out the limitations of the numerical procedure for a successive application in a real environment. Towards this end, this paper evaluates the reconstruction capabilities of the Iterative Multiscaling Approach (IMSA) when dealing with experimental data by considering different numerical models of the illuminating setup. In fact, since the incident electromagnetic field is usually collected in a limited set of measurement points and inversion methods based on the use of the “state” equation require the knowledge of the radiated field in a finer grid of positions, an effective numerical procedure for the synthesis of the electromagnetic source is generally needed. Consequently, the performances of the inversion process may be strongly affected by the numerical model and, in such a case, a great care should be devoted to this key issue to guarantee suitable and reliable reconstructions.