Electromagnetic Inverse Profiling for Plasma Diagnostics via Sparse Recovery Approaches

The 1-D single-view multifrequency electromagnetic inverse scattering problem, or inverse profiling, is addressed to provide effective means for plasma diagnostics, taking into account the dispersive properties of such a medium. To this aim, first-order linearized approaches are considered in light of the renewed possibility to conveniently solve the underlying ill-posed problem through the sparse recovery optimization provided by the prominent compressive sensing theory. The intrinsic theoretical limitation of such a problem when tackled by means of the standard minimum energy solution is discussed, and effective approaches based on sparse recovery are proposed and tested against simulated data that deal with reliable benchmarks for microwave imaging in plasma diagnostics.