Three-Dimensional Microwave Imaging Problems Solved Through an Efficient Multiscaling Particle Swarm Optimization

An enhanced multistep strategy based on a multiresolution particle swarm optimizer is proposed for 3-D microwave imaging. The aim of such an integration is to improve the convergence capabilities of the approach and to reduce the dimension of the search space and the computational burden of the optimization strategy, thanks to a constrained control of the particle velocities adaptively determined. This favors the exploitation of the global search capabilities of the particle swarms also in the framework of large-scale 3-D inverse scattering problems. The proposed technique is assessed by considering numerical tests concerned with single and multiple 3-D targets. The results of an experimental testing are also discussed.