Multipath Propagation Influence on Retrievable Information in Indoor Electromagnetic Imaging

Indoor sensing of non-cooperative targets by means of systems mainly designed for wireless communication is a topic attracting huge interest. In this frame, since few years, several studies have addressed the interaction of electromagnetic waves with the surrounding environment to improve the detection and tracking performance. As a contribution to this filed, the present work focuses on a linear microwave imaging approach and conducts a theoretical analysis to investigate how multipath reflections, experienced when the electromagnetic signal propagation occurs in an indoor environment, affect the imaging capabilities. The analysis is carried out in terms of the retrievable spectral content and explores how this quantity is influenced by multipath propagation effects. As a preliminary study, a canonical indoor scenario is considered, and a 2D ray-based scalar model is adopted to model the signal propagation.