Newton-type algorithms have been extensively studied in nonlinear microwave imaging due to their quadratic convergence rate and ability to recover images with high contrast values. In the past, Newton methods have been implemented in conjunction with smoothness promoting optimization/regularization schemes. However, this type of regularization schemes are known to perform poorly when applied in imagining domains with sparse content or sharp variations. In this work, an inexact Newton algorithm is formulated and implemented in conjunction with a linear sparse optimization scheme. A novel preconditioning technique is proposed to increase the convergence rate of the optimization problem. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed framework produces sharper and more accurate images when applied in sparse/sparsified domains.

A hybrid electromagnetics (EM)-circuit simulator for analyzing complex systems consisting of EM devices loaded with nonlinear multi-port lumped circuits is described. The proposed scheme splits the computational domain into two subsystems: EM and circuit subsystems, where field interactions are modeled using Maxwell and Kirchhoff equations, respectively. Maxwell equations are discretized using a discontinuous Galerkin time domain (DGTD) scheme while Kirchhoff equations are discretized using a modified nodal analysis (MNA)-based scheme. The coupling between the EM and circuit subsystems is realized at the lumped ports, where related EM fields and circuit voltages and currents are allowed to “interact’’ via numerical flux. To account for nonlinear lumped circuit elements, the standard Newton-Raphson method is applied at every time step. Additionally, a local time-stepping scheme is developed to improve the efficiency of the hybrid solver. Numerical examples consisting of EM systems loaded with single and multiport linear/nonlinear circuit networks are presented to demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency, and applicability of the proposed solver.

Simulators capable of computing scattered fields from objects of uncertain shapes are highly useful in electromagnetics and photonics, where device designs are typically subject to fabrication tolerances. Knowledge of statistical variations in scattered fields is useful in ensuring error-free functioning of devices. Oftentimes such simulators use a Monte Carlo (MC) scheme to sample the random domain, where the variables parameterize the uncertainties in the geometry. At each sample, which corresponds to a realization of the geometry, a deterministic electromagnetic solver is executed to compute the scattered fields. However, to obtain accurate statistics of the scattered fields, the number of MC samples has to be large. This significantly increases the total execution time. In this work, to address this challenge, the Multilevel MC (MLMC [1]) scheme is used together with a (deterministic) surface integral equation solver. The MLMC achieves a higher efficiency by balancing the statistical errors due to sampling of the random domain and the numerical errors due to discretization of the geometry at each of these samples. Error balancing results in a smaller number of samples requiring coarser discretizations. Consequently, total execution time is significantly shortened.