Fast-forward solvers for the low-frequency detection of buried dielectric objects

It is known that the extended Born approximation (ExBorn) is much faster than the method of moments (MoM) in the study of electromagnetic scattering by three-dimensional (3-D) dielectric objects, while it is much more accurate than the Born approximation at low frequencies. Hence, it is more applicable in the low-frequency numerical simulation tools. However, the conventional ExBorn is still too slow to solve large-scale problems because it requires O(N/sup 2/) computational load, where N is the number of unknowns. In this paper, a fast ExBorn algorithm is proposed for the numerical simulation of 3-D dielectric objects buried in a lossy Earth. When the buried objects are discretized with uniform rectangular mesh and the Green's functions are extended appropriately, the computational load can be reduced to O(N log N) using the cyclic convolution, cyclic correlation, and fast Fourier transform (FFT). Numerical analysis shows that the fast ExBorn provides good approximations if the buried target has a small or moderate contrast. If the contrast is large, however, ExBorn will be less accurate. In this case, a preconditioned conjugate-gradient FFT (CG-FFT) algorithm is developed, where the solution of the fast ExBorn is chosen as the initial guess and the preconditioner. Numerical results are given to test the validity and efficiency of the fast algorithms.