A METHOD FOR SOLVING THE INVERSE PROBLEM IN SOFT ACOUSTIC SCATTERING

The inverse problem considered is to determine the shape of an acoustically soft obstacle in R3 from a knowledge of the time-harmonic incident plane wave and the far-field pattern of the scattered wave. To solve this inverse Dirichlet problem in acoustic scattering without requiring the solution of integral equations, a parametric representation is introduced in which the parameters are determined by a method of optimization. Direct scattering can also be handled by this technique. Comparisons reveal that results are obtained more easily than, and just as accurately as, in other methods. © 1990 Oxford University Press.