Dielectric Objects Research Articles

Whale Optimization Algorithm with Machine Learning for Microwave Imaging

This paper introduces a novel approach for reconstructing microwave imaging by combining the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) with deep learning techniques. In it, electromagnetic waves are used to illuminate inhomogeneous dielectric objects in free space, and the scattered field is recorded. Due to the highly nonlinear nature of microwave imaging, the WOA is first employed to calculate an initial guess from the measured scattered field of dielectric objects. This step significantly reduces the training complexity for machine learning. Subsequently, the initial guess provided by the WOA is fed into a U-Net to accurately reconstruct the microwave image. Numerical simulation results indicate that the combination of the WOA and machine learning outperforms traditional methods under varying noise levels, enhancing the precision and effectiveness of the reconstruction process. In detail, the RMSE can be reduced 4–10% for dielectric constant distribution from 1 to 2.5 and SSIM can be increased about 30% for most cases.

An Inverse recursive algorithm to retrieve the shape of the inaccessible dielectric objects

A regularized electromagnetic iterative inverse algorithm is formulated and implemented to reconstruct the shape of 2D dielectric objects using the far-field pattern of the scattered field data. To achieve this, an integral operator that maps the unknown boundary of the object onto the far-field pattern of the scattered field is defined and solved for the unknown boundary. The addressed inverse problem has an ill-posed nature and inherits nonlinearity. To overcome these, the proposed solution is linearized via Newton and regularized by Tikhonov in the sense of least squares. Besides, the dominance of the shadow region in the inverse-imaging process is exceeded by considering the superposition of multi-incoming plane waves, leading to less computational cost and a very fast inversion process. Comprehensive numerical analyses are carried out to ascertain the algorithm's feasibility, revealing that it is very efficient and promising.

Seeing Through Muddy Water: Laser-Induced Graphene for Portable Tomography Imaging.

Due to its outstanding physical and chemical properties, graphene synthesized by laser scribing on polyimide (PI) offers excellent opportunities for photothermal applications, antiviral and antibacterial surfaces, and electrochemical storage and sensing. However, the utilization of such graphene for imaging is yet to be explored. Herein, using chemically durable and electrically conductive laser-induced graphene (LIG) for tomography imaging in aqueous suspensions is proposed. These graphene electrodes are designed as impedance imaging units for four-terminal electrical measurements. Using the real-time portable imaging prototypes, the conductive and dielectric objects can be seen in clear and muddy water with equivalent impedance modeling. This low-cost graphene tomography measurement system offers significant advantages over traditional visual cameras, in which the suspended muddy particles hinder the imaging resolution. This research shows the potential of applying graphene nanomaterials in emerging marine technologies, such as underwater robotics and automatic fisheries.

Revealing the Invisible: Imaging Through Non-Radiating Subspace

This paper presents a novel modification to the subspace optimization method (SOM) for solving inverse scattering problems in diverse background media. By incorporating sequential quadratic programming (SQP), a fast and accurate optimization technique, our approach aims to improve the reconstruction of dielectric objects buried in complex environments. We investigate the influence of non-radiating (NR) subspace reconstruction on imaging quality by analyzing the induced current-exterior field mapping operator's singular values. The scattering formulation of direct problems is performed through numerical methods such as coupled dipole method, finite elements-boundary integral, and electric field integral equations. Radiating and non-radiating objective functions are defined and minimized using SQP to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Numerical experiments demonstrate significant enhancements in imaging quality, robustness, and computational efficiency compared to existing techniques. This modified SOM offers a promising avenue for precise and reliable reconstruction of electromagnetic scattering objects, with potential applications in various fields including medical imaging, remote sensing, and non-destructive evaluation.

Validity of Thin Element Approximation in diffractometry of opaque thick objects

The Thin Element Approximation (TEA) is widely used in diffraction analyses since it can be applied in efficient plane-to-plane propagation algorithms. While refinements have been developed for dielectric objects to obtain more accurate results, TEA is assumed precise for opaque objects. However, through numerical simulations presented in this work, based on Wave Propagation Method, we analyze the tendency of TEA to overestimate the dimensions of opaque objects in diffractometry. This effect was acknowledged in the case of cylinders, and we obtain similar results for the case of rectangular thick strips. On the other hand, TEA demonstrates a high level of accuracy when applied to objects with thickness concentrated at the center and thin edges, such as the isosceles triangular obstacle. Finally, we analyze objects whose shape is defined using the superellipse function, which is chosen for its versatility in generating objects of equivalent width and maximum thickness but with different shapes just changing a single parameter. Our results highlight the importance of considering the object geometry when employing this approximation in diffraction studies of opaque three-dimensional objects.

Composite scattering computation from multiple dielectric targets of one-dimensional fractal sea surface using MOM

Bistatic scattering coefficient have important application of ocean active microwave remote sensing. In this paper, a general expression of the composite scattering coefficient for multiple dielectric targets of one-dimensional fractal sea surface is derived by MOM method. Secondly, the bistatic scattering coefficient is computed, there are two class missile targets and one class ship target of one-dimensional fractal sea surface, and the influence of the water dielectric constant, fractal dimension, wind speed, the target dielectric constant and spatial position is discussed, and the corresponding conclusions are given. The proposed algorithm is able to solve some composite scattering problems, such as ‘dielectric or conductive object + rough surface’, ‘dielectric or conductive floating object +rough’ and it has certain generalization and reference, and it lays a foundation for solving the composite scattering coefficient of multiple medium targets in two-dimensional fractal sea surface.

Determining the parameters of a dielectric ellipsoid for minimising front echo in Gaussian pulse scattering analysis

AbstractA novel numerical method is introduced for minimising the presence of scattering echoes in the frontal area of a dielectric ellipsoid through the application of the method of auxiliary sources (MAS) method. This approach utilises a Gaussian radio pulse that spans the frequency spectrum from 0 to 6 GHz. The approach involves determining the properties of an ellipsoid, such as its dimensions and a dielectric permittivity, using a specially developed MATLAB software package to make this ellipsoid invisible. This provides a valuable military and defence technology tool, particularly for stealth and invisibility technology applications. It is beneficial for avoiding detection by radar systems utilised for enemy surveillance and identifying concealed objects. This aims to eliminate the need for metamaterials for invisibility cloaking. The suggested methodology has been confirmed through a validation process, which involved a comparison of the outcomes derived from numerical experiments conducted during pulse echo observations using the FDTD method and an analytical solution. MAS offers a notable advantage over other methods and commercial software by significantly reducing computational time for simulating and analysing 3D dielectric objects. This allows for quicker consideration of various parameter scenarios and optimisation for desired outcomes.

Transient charge-driven 3D conformal printing via pulsed-plasma impingement

Seamless integration of microstructures and circuits on three-dimensional (3D) complex surfaces is of significance and is catalyzing the emergence of many innovative 3D curvy electronic devices. However, patterning fine features on arbitrary 3D targets remains challenging. Here, we propose a facile charge-driven electrohydrodynamic 3D microprinting technique that allows micron- and even submicron-scale patterning of functional inks on a couple of 3D-shaped dielectrics via an atmospheric-pressure cold plasma jet. Relying on the transient charging of exposed sites arising from the weakly ionized gas jet, the specified charge is programmably deposited onto the surface as a virtual electrode with spatial and time spans of ~mm in diameter and ~μs in duration to generate a localized electric field accordantly. Therefore, inks with a wide range of viscosities can be directly drawn out from micro-orifices and deposited on both two-dimensional (2D) planar and 3D curved surfaces with a curvature radius down to ~1 mm and even on the inner wall of narrow cavities via localized electrostatic attraction, exhibiting a printing resolution of ~450 nm. In addition, several conformal electronic devices were successfully printed on 3D dielectric objects. Self-aligned 3D microprinting, with stacking layers up to 1400, is also achieved due to the electrified surfaces. This microplasma-induced printing technique exhibits great advantages such as ultrahigh resolution, excellent compatibility of inks and substrates, antigravity droplet dispersion, and omnidirectional printing on 3D freeform surfaces. It could provide a promising solution for intimately fabricating electronic devices on arbitrary 3D surfaces.

A Nested Iterative Solver for Substructure CMA of Composite Metallic–Dielectric Objects

A Nested Iterative Solver for Substructure CMA of Composite Metallic–Dielectric Objects

Application of Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Network for Electromagnetic Imaging in Half-Space.

In this paper, we introduce a novel artificial intelligence technique with an attention mechanism for half-space electromagnetic imaging. A dielectric object in half-space is illuminated by TM (transverse magnetic) waves. Since measurements can only be made in the upper space, the measurement angle will be limited. As a result, we apply a back-propagation scheme (BPS) to generate an initial guessed image from the measured scattered fields for scatterer buried in the lower half-space. This process can effectively reduce the high nonlinearity of the inverse scattering problem. We further input the guessed images into the generative adversarial network (GAN) and the self-attention generative adversarial network (SAGAN), respectively, to compare the reconstruction performance. Numerical results prove that both SAGAN and GAN can reconstruct dielectric objects and the MNIST dataset under same measurement conditions. Our analysis also reveals that SAGAN is able to reconstruct electromagnetic images more accurately and efficiently than GAN.

Fast quantum interference of a nanoparticle via optical potential control

We introduce and theoretically analyze a scheme to prepare and detect non-Gaussian quantum states of an optically levitated particle via the interaction with light pulses that generate cubic and inverted potentials. We show that this approach allows to operate on sufficiently short time- and length scales to beat decoherence in a regime accessible in state-of-the-art experiments. Specifically, we predict the observation of single-particle interference of a nanoparticle with a mass above 108 atomic mass units delocalized by several nanometers, on timescales of milliseconds. The proposed experiment uses only optical and electrostatic control, and can be performed at about 10-10 mbar and at room temperature. We discuss the prospect of this method for coherently splitting the wavepacket of massive dielectric objects without using either projective measurements or an internal level structure.

Efficient Methods for Solving Electromagnetic Wave Scattering from Dielectric Objects Using Method of Moments with Interpolation-FFT

Efficient Methods for Solving Electromagnetic Wave Scattering from Dielectric Objects Using Method of Moments with Interpolation-FFT

Explicit and unconditionally stable finite-difference time-domain subgridding algorithm based on hanging variables

Due to the limitation of the stability condition, the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method cannot efficiently deal with electromagnetic problems containing fine structures. The explicit and unconditionally stable (EUS) FDTD method can eliminate the constraint of the stability condition and improve the simulation efficiency of fine structures by filtering out the unstable modes for the system matrix. However, the EUS-FDTD method needs to solve the eigenvalues of the numerical system matrix, and the symmetry of the numerical system matrix needs to be ensured when the subgridding scheme is used to discretize targets containing fine structures. The existing EUS-FDTD subgridding method encounters some problems such as complex implementation and insufficient accuracy. In order to solve the above problems, in this work, the hanging variables subgridding (HVS) algorithm is applied to the EUS-FDTD algorithm. Starting from the symmetry of the system matrix, the stability of the hanging variables subgridding algorithm is proven, and a high-precision, stable, and easy-to-implement HVS-EUS-FDTD scheme is proposed. Numerical examples of the radiation of linear magnetic currents in free space, electromagnetic scattering of multiple dielectric objects, and a three-dimensional cavity containing a medium demonstrate the stability, high accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. Numerical experiments show that the computational efficiency of the HVS-EUS-FDTD algorithm can be improved hundreds of times compared with that of the uniform fine grid FDTD algorithm, and the highest computational efficiency can be improved up to ratio (the size ratio of coarse grid to fine grid) times compared with that of the HVS-FDTD algorithm.

Fast Direct Solution of Composite Dielectric Objects by M-HODLR

Fast Direct Solution of Composite Dielectric Objects by M-HODLR

Universal Casimir attraction between filaments at the cell scale

The electromagnetic Casimir interaction between dielectric objects immersed in salted water includes a universal contribution that is not screened by the solvent and therefore long-ranged. Here, we study the geometry of two parallel dielectric cylinders. We derive the Casimir free energy by using the scattering method. We show that its magnitude largely exceeds the thermal energy scale for a large parameter range. This includes length scales relevant for actin filaments and microtubules in cells. We show that the Casimir free energy is a universal function of the geometry, independent of the dielectric response functions of the cylinders, at all distances of biological interest. While multiple interactions exist between filaments in cells, this universal attractive interaction should have an important role in the cohesion of bundles of parallel filaments.

A Time-Domain Volume Integral Equation Solver to Analyze Electromagnetic Scattering From Nonlinear Dielectric Objects

A time domain electric field volume integral equation (TD-EFVIE) solver is proposed for analyzing electromagnetic scattering from dielectric objects with Kerr nonlinearity. The nonlinear constitutive relation that relates electric flux and electric field induced in the scatterer is used as an auxiliary equation that complements TD-EFVIE. The ordinary differential equation system that arises from TD-EFVIE’s Schaubert-Wilton-Glisson (SWG)-based discretization is integrated in time using a predictor-corrector method for the unknown expansion coefficients of the electric field. Matrix systems that arise from the SWG-based discretization of the nonlinear constitutive relation and its inverse obtained using the Padé approximant are used to carry out explicit updates of the electric field and the electric flux expansion coefficients at the predictor and the corrector stages of the time integration method. The resulting explicit marching-on-in-time (MOT) scheme does not call for any Newton-like nonlinear solver and only requires solution of sparse and well-conditioned Gram matrix systems at every step. Numerical results show that the proposed explicit MOT-based TD-EFVIE solver is more accurate than the finite-difference time-domain method that is traditionally used for analyzing transient electromagnetic scattering from nonlinear objects.

How Do 3D Printing Parameters Affect the Dielectric and Mechanical Performance of Polylactic Acid–Cellulose Acetate Polymer Blends?

Three-dimensional printing is a prototyping technique that is widely used in various fields, such as the electrical sector, to produce specific dielectric objects. Our study explores the mechanical and dielectric behavior of polylactic acid (PLA) and plasticized cellulose acetate (CA) blends manufactured via Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF). A preliminary optimization of 3D printing parameters showed that a print speed of 30 mm·s−1 and a print temperature of 215 °C provided the best compromise between print quality and processing time. The dielectric properties were very sensitive to the three main parameters (CA content WCA, infill ratio, and layer thickness). A Taguchi L9 3^3 experimental design revealed that the infill ratio and WCA were the main parameters influencing dielectric properties. Increasing the infill ratio and WCA increased the dielectric constant ε′ and electrical conductivity σAC. It would, therefore, be possible to promote the integration of CA in the dielectric domain through 3D printing while counterbalancing its greater polarity by reducing the infill ratio. The dielectric findings are promising for an electrical insulation application. Furthermore, the mechanical findings obtained through dynamic mechanical analysis are discussed.

Development of a method for attaching thin films to curved surfaces using a bipolar electrostatic chuck with a collective beam structure

A bipolar electrostatic chuck (ESC) having a collective beam structure is getting attention as an effective device for handling thin, soft dielectric objects such as polymer film or paper. It has been shown that the ESC devices can grasp and attach thin film objects on a plane. However, the feasibility of pasting films on curved surfaces was not verified. Accurate film attachment requires a designated attachment trajectory so that the thin film does not slide on the curved surface. The trajectory determination depends on how the stiffness of the beam and thin film, the frictional force between the beam and thin film, and electrostatic force affect the attachment process. This study aims at developing a method for calculating the attachment trajectory by modelling the beam of the electrostatic device and thin film as a continuum model consisting of springs and masses. The model's validity was verified by comparing the results with experimental data, and the feasibility of attaching a thin film to a curved surface using an ESC having a collective beam structure was clarified.

Improved hybrid discretisation of volume integral equation with the characteristic basis function method for analysing scattering from complex dielectric objects

AbstractThe improved hybrid discretisation of volume integral equation (VIE) combined with the characteristic basis function method is proposed to analyse the scattering from complex dielectric objects in this study. To mitigate the excessive number of discrete elements which arise from the conformal discretisation on the complex dielectric objects, the hybrid discretisation is developed. For the conventional hybrid discretisation, the conformal Schaubert–Wilton–Glisson (SWG) basis functions are used to discretise the homogeneous regions, meanwhile, the non‐conformal half‐SWG basis functions are employed to discretise the boundary regions which separate different materials or multiscale structures. The hybrid discretisation takes advantage of the merits of both conformal and non‐conformal basis functions and improves the computational efficiency for solving the VIE. In our study, a kind of edge basis function defined within boundary tetrahedral elements substitutes for the SWG basis functions to model the boundary regions, leading to the further reduction on the number of basis functions. Moreover, the characteristic basis functions extracted from the low‐level basis functions are employed to construct the reduced matrix of which the size is considerably smaller than that of the system matrix derived from the VIE. Several numerical results are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

Clutter Effect Investigation on Co-Polarized Chipless RFID Tags and Mitigation Using Cross-Polarized Tags, Analytical Model, Simulation, and Measurement.

Chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is expected to replace barcode technology due to its ability to read in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) situations, long reading range, and low cost. Currently, there is extensive research being conducted on frequency-coded (FC) co-polarized radar cross-section (RCS)-based tags, which are widely used. However, detecting co-polarized chipless RFID tags in cluttered environments is still a challenge, as confirmed by measuring two co-polarized tags in front of a perfect metal reflector (30.5cm×22.5cm). To address this challenge, a realistic mathematical model for a chipless RFID system has been developed that takes into account the characteristics of the reader and the tag, as well as reflections from cluttered objects. This extensive mathematical model developed for linear chipless RFID systems in clutter scenarios holds the potential to greatly assist researchers in their exploration of RCS-based tags. By relying solely on simulations, this model provides a tool to effectively analyze and understand RCS-based tags, ultimately simplifying the process of generating more authentic tag designs. This model has been simulated and verified with measurement results by placing a single flat metal reflector behind two co-polarized one-bit designs: a dipole array tag and a square patch tag. The results showed that the interfering signal completely overlaps the ID of the co-polarized tag, severely limiting its detectability. To solve this issue, the proposed solution involves reading the tag in cross-polarization mode by etching a diagonal slot in the square patch tag. This proposed tag provides high immunity to the environment and can be detected in front of both dielectric and metallic objects.