On the theory, simulation, testing and applications of electromagnetic time-reversal method

Time-reversal (TR) is an effective method for solving inverse problems. However, theoretical controversies on the mechanism of TR still exist. This work starts by examining fundamental laws in wave physics and electromagnetics and presents a new view of the electromagnetic TR method. Then a cavity is employed, and the hardware experiments are performed to validate the TR as a robust and straightforward method for source reconstruction. Since the testing equipment has a limited working bandwidth, special algorithms are developed to transform the band-limited testing data into causal time-domain signals for the TR operations. The results verify the effectiveness of the TR method in real-world situations. The work presented in this paper paves the way for extensions and applications of the TR method toward solving complex, realistic problems.