IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO.
3, MARCH 2013
Optimal Antenna Currents for Q, Superdirectivity,
and Radiation Patterns Using Convex Optimization
Mats Gustafsson, Member, IEEE, and Sven Nordebo, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—The high Q-factor (low bandwidth) and low efficiency
make the design of small antennas challenging. Here, convex op-
timization is used to determine current distributions that provide
upper bounds on the antenna performance. Optimization formula-
tions for maximal gain Q-factor quotient, minimal Q-factor for su-
perdirectivity, and minimum Q for given far-fields are presented.
The effects of antennas embedded in structures are also discussed.
The results are illustrated for planar geometries.
Index Terms—Antenna Q, antenna theory, convex optimization,
physical limitations, small antennas, superdirectivity.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HERE are many advanced small antenna designs, such as
folded helices, folded meander lines, and concepts based
on metamaterials, fractals, and genetic algorithms. The high
Q-factor (low bandwidth) and low efficiency make the design
of small antennas challenging as the Q-factor, efficiency, and
radiation resistance must be controlled simultaneously [1], [2].
It is well known that the antenna performance deteriorates with
decreasing physical size (measured in wavelengths) of the an-
tenna. The fundamental trade-off between performance and size
is expressed by physical bounds. Physical bounds are useful be-
cause they provide bounds on the performance based solely on
the shape and size of the design volume.
Chu [3] used the stored and radiated energies outside a sphere
that circumscribes the antenna to determine physical bounds on
the Q-factor, , see also [1] for an overview. The stored energy
in the interior of the sphere was added in [4]. Physical bounds on
the directivity Q-factor quotient were introduced for arbi-
trary sized and shaped antennas in [5], [6] under the assumption
of . Related bounds on the Q-factor are investigated for
small antennas in [7], [8] and for finite sizes in [9]. In [10], op-
timal currents and physical bounds on are formulated as
an optimization problem using the expressions for the stored en-
ergies presented by Vandenbosch [11], see also [12]–[14]. The
bounds in [5]–[8], [10] are similar for the case of small electric
dipole antennas composed of non-magnetic materials.
Manuscript received April 02, 2012; revised June 30, 2012; accepted Oc-
tober 22, 2012. Date of publication November 15, 2012; date of current version
February 27, 2013. This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council
(VR).
M. Gustafsson is with the Department of Electrical and Informa-
tion Technology, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden (e-mail:
mats.gustafsson@eit.lth.se).
S. Nordebo is with the School of Computer Science, Physics and Mathe-
matics, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden (e-mail: sven.nordebo@lnu.se).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2227656
0018-926X/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
1109
Here, it is shown that convex optimization [15], [16] can be
used as a tool to formulate and solve several fundamental ques-
tions for small antennas. The approach offers many opportuni-
ties to derive new physical bounds on antennas. Here, we e.g.,
present results for minimum of superdirective antennas and
minimum for antennas with a prescribed far field. We also
illustrate how antennas embedded in metallic structures can be
included in the bounds. This generalizes the results in [3]–[10]
to many new and important antenna problems. It also general-
izes the optimization formulation for in [10] to include the
maximum of the stored electric and magnetic energies.
The presented results are for arbitrary shaped structures but
restricted to antennas composed of non-magnetic materials.
The convex optimization problems are also only valid for func-
tionals that are positive semidefinite. Here, we limit the size to
approximately half a wavelength to obtain positive semidefinite
energy expressions, see also [10], [14]. It is also important to
realize that the quality factor loses its practical meaning when
is small. This restricts the interpretation of the presented
results to that coincides with the size restrictions on the
antennas considered in this paper.
Optimization is used in many areas including antenna design
[17], synthesis of array patterns [18], and inverse problems [19],
[20]. The formulation as a convex optimization problem is ad-
vantageous as: it has a well-developed theory [15], there are ef-
ficient solvers [21], [22], and the solution gives error estimates.
Moreover, a local minimum is also the global minimum, so there
is no risk of getting trapped in local minima. This is very dif-
ferent from general global optimization problems [17] and one
can often state that a problem is solved if it is formulated as a
convex optimization problem [15].
This paper is organized as follows. The considered antenna
parameters are introduced in Section II. The used method of
moments formulation is presented in Section III. Section IV
contains the main results of the paper. It is divided into five
subsections containing various convex optimization formula-
tions giving antenna bounds. The results are also illustrated with
bounds for planar rectangular geometries. The paper is con-
cluded in Section V. Polarizability and spherical modes are dis-
cussed in Appendices A and B, respectively.
II. ANTENNA PARAMETERS
We consider antennas in a volume composed of non-mag-
netic materials with free space in the region exterior to , see
Fig. 1. The radiated fields and stored energies are expressed
in the antenna current in . The radiation intensity in the
-direction is , where is the
1110 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

and , and is
the permeability of free space. The stored magnetic energy is
, where

(6)

The corresponding expression for the total radiated power is

with

Fig. 1. Structure in a region with the antenna confined to . The (7)

antenna current for induces the current density for
with a radiation pattern evaluated in the direction and polarization .
The normalized quantities, , in (6) and in (7) are
introduced to simplify the optimization approach used in this
tangential components of the radiation vector [23] paper. They have dimensions given by volume, , times the
dimension of , i.e., . The corresponding dimension
(1) of the radiation vector (1) is volume times the dimension of .

III. MOM FORMULATION

denotes the free space impedance, the We use local basis functions, , analogous with ordinary
wavenumber, the speed of light in free space, , and Method of Moments (MoM) solutions of the electric field inte-
the time convention is used. The corresponding electric gral equation [25] to approximate the radiation vector (1), stored
field is , where denotes the energies (5), (6), and radiated power (7). Expand the current
position vector, , and . density in local basis functions
We also use the unit vector , with , to evaluate
the partial radiation intensity for the polarization . The field is (8)
linearly polarized for and circularly polarized for
, where the superscript, , denotes the complex
conjugate. This gives the partial radiation intensity and introduce the matrix with elements to simplify
the notation. The basis functions are assumed to be real valued,
, where
divergence conforming, and having vanishing normal compo-
(2) nents at the boundary [25]. In this paper, we use piecewise linear
basis functions on quadrilateral elements. The discretization is
non-equidistant to capture edge singularities of the charge den-
The partial directivity, , and partial gain, , are sity.
defined as [24] The radiation vector projected on , cf., (2), defines the
matrix from
(3)
(9)
respectively, where is the total radiated power and is
the dissipated power in the antenna structure. The quality factor where the superscript, , denotes the Hermitian transpose and
(or antenna Q), , is the dependence of the matrix on and is suppressed. The
normalized stored electric energy is approximated as
(4)
(10)
where and denote the stored electric and magnetic en-
ergies, respectively.
where the matrix has the elements
Follow the approach in [10] and use the results by Van-
denbosch [11], to express the stored electric energy as
, where
(11)

The normalized stored magnetic energy,

(5) , and the normalized radiated power,
GUSTAFSSON AND NORDEBO: OPTIMAL ANTENNA CURRENTS FOR Q, SUPERDIRECTIVITY, AND RADIATION PATTERNS 1111

are defined analogously. The matrices , and
are real-valued and symmetric. It is observed that and
can be indefinite for electrically large structures [10],
[14]. In the numerical examples in this paper, we restrict the
electrical size to be approximately less than half a wavelength.
The eigenvalues are also computed to verify that and
are positive semidefinite. Here, it is observed that there can be
a few negative eigenvalues. These negative eigenvalues are
however due to the used finite numerical precision and their rel-
ative amplitude is compared to the positive eigenvalues.
We transform the matrices to become positive semidefinite by
setting these eigenvalues to zero.
and the corresponding matrix representations for the integral
operators in (13), see also Appendix A. This gives the convex
optimization problem
(14)
This is a convex optimization problem in the form of a linearly
constrained quadratic program [15] that e.g., can be solved using
[22]. It is also illustrative to use Lagrange multipliers [15],
[26] to rewrite (14) as the linear system

IV. CONVEX OPTIMIZATION FORMULATIONS (15)

We use convex optimization [15] to determine fundamental
bounds on the antenna performance and their corresponding op-
timal current densities. We assume that , and are where and are the Lagrange multipliers. The linear
positive semidefinite for the electrical sizes considered in this system (15) is identical with the MoM solution for the polariz-
paper. First, bounds on for small antennas as and ability, using Galerkin’s method, see Appendix A.
are analyzed. It is followed by bounds on for This illustrates that the convex optimization can be numerically
antennas with prescribed far fields, and for superdirective an- identical to the solution of the integral equation in [10].
tennas, all with . The final case is bounds on for The bound for the magnetic dipole case is reduced to an
embedded antennas where , see Fig. 1. integral equation involving an arbitrary function in [10]. Here,
we use a convex optimization problem to derive a simple linear
A. Bounds on for Small Antennas system for the bound. The gain Q-factor quotient for a
magnetic dipole antenna is bounded as
Explicit bounds on the directivity -factor quotient, ,
(and equivalently ) are presented for small antennas in
[10]. The low-frequency expansion of the current density is (16)
as , where
and . The expansion simplifies the energy ex-
pressions (5) and (6) for small antennas [8], [10], [12]. The where . We scale to reformulate (16) as the opti-
bound separates into electric dipoles, magnetic dipoles, mization problem
and mixed modes antennas [10]. In [10], it is also shown that
it is sufficient to consider surface currents for small antennas.
The gain Q-factor quotient for small electric dipole antennas is
bounded as [10]

(12)
(17)

subject to the constraint of zero total charge . Use the basis functions (8) to get the convex optimization
Use that the quotient is invariant for scaling to rewrite problem
the bound (12) as the optimization problem

(18)

where is an matrix for the stored magnetic energy,

an matrix representation of the divergence operator
on the basis (8) and the corresponding row matrix for the
first constraint in (17). Use Lagrange multipliers, and , to
(13)
transform (18) to the linear system

where is included for convenience. Use basis functions sim-

ilar to (8) to approximate the charge density as , (19)
let denote the matrix with elements , and ,
1112 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

can be replaced by maximization of .

This gives the convex optimization problem

(22)

This is a quadratically constrained linear program (QCLP)

giving the upper bound on (21) as , where
and a solution of (22). Note, that the current
matrix, , is rescaled such that is dimensionless.
There are many alternative convex formulations to maximize
Fig. 2. Upper bounds on the partial gain Q-factor quotient for cur- (21), e.g., the Lagrange dual or using that the maximum of two
rents confined to planar rectangles with sides and for small antennas using
(15), (19), and (20). The radiation patters of the and modes are de- convex functions is convex [15] to minimize the stored energy,
picted. The bound is normalized with , where is the radius of the smallest i.e.,
circumscribing sphere, i.e., .

(23)
In [10], it is also shown that the constraint on is relaxed
for combined electric and magnetic dipole antennas: giving , where
and a solution of (23).
(20) We consider currents confined to planar rectangles to illus-
trate the results. The bound on and its corresponding
and for lossless antennas are depicted in Fig. 3 for rectan-
We consider a planar rectangle to illustrate the physical bounds gles with side lengths and . The
on for small antennas, see Fig. 2. The rectangle has side partial gain is evaluated for the polarization and the di-
lengths and with the radius of the rections and . The two optimization formulations
smallest circumscribing sphere. The bound on the electric dipole (22) and (23) give similar results when solved using [22].
is identical to the results in [5], [6], [10] and many small dipole The bound on is normalized with the electrical size
antennas perform close to the bound [6]. The magnetic dipole to simplify comparison with the results in [6], [10], where
case is more constrained. In particular, the bound shows that it is denotes the radius of the smallest circumscribing sphere. The
difficult to utilize the magnetic dipole for elongated structures. low-frequency limit for is given by the polarizability as
The combined mode case (20) offers a substantially improved shown in [10]. It is also observed that is almost in-
performance [10]. dependent of the electrical size for or .
The bounds in Fig. 2 are computed using piecewise linear The case with radiation in the direction offers an
basis functions on rectangular elements. We use a non-equidis- increased . In particular, the case increases
tant mesh for the electric dipole case, where the mesh is con- from 0.29 to 0.63. Here, we note that the bound
structed to have approximately equal charge on each element in [5], [6], [27] is sharper for this case. It is also important to re-
for improved convergence, see also [27]. The magnetic dipole alize that the bound in [5], [6], [27] are for the bandwidth of the
case is computed on an equidistant mesh. We also use the con- antenna and it is not guaranteed that the optimal current distri-
straint to reduce the size of the linear system. butions considered here can be generated from single-port an-
tennas with a half-power fractional bandwidth , see
B. Maximal also [28]. In Fig. 3(a), it is further seen that the improvement
Maximization of for finite sized antennas is formulated for the direction diminishes as decreases. The resulting
as a convex optimization problem. Combine (3) and (4) to ex- current distribution on a coarse mesh is depicted for
press the gain Q-factor quotient as , and . The current is composed of one -di-
rected component and one loop type component, see also Fig. 4.
It is similar for the thinner structures but the loop current gets
weaker. The corresponding currents for the cases are sim-
(21)
ilar to the -directed component. It is also known that the cur-
rent distribution is not unique [10]. There are antenna designs
In [10], the quotient is maximized under the assumption that perform close to the bound for the cases [6]. The
using a Lagrangian formulation. To solve the gen- cases are more involved and there are, to our knowledge,
eral case (21), we rewrite the quotient as a convex op- presently no design that reach these bounds. It is also known
timization problem. We follow [10] and note that is in- that the loop current is associated with low radiation resistance.
variant for multiplicative scaling with arbitrary com- The corresponding partial directivities, , and Q-fac-
plex valued . It is hence sufficient to consider real-valued tors for lossless structures are depicted in Figs. 3(b), (c), respec-
quantities , see (9). Moreover, maximization of tively. Here, it is observed that the directivity differs between
GUSTAFSSON AND NORDEBO: OPTIMAL ANTENNA CURRENTS FOR Q, SUPERDIRECTIVITY, AND RADIATION PATTERNS 1113

Fig. 4. The regular spherical vector waves for , i.e., mag-

netic and electric dipoles in the - and -directions, respectively, evaluated on
a planar rectangle with side lengths and , see also Fig. 2
for illustrations of their radiation patterns.

C. Minimal for Given Radiation Pattern

Consider the case with a desired radiated field repre-
sented with the radiation vector (2). We search for the current
density, , with the radiation vector that approximates
, i.e., , and has minimal stored energy. The deviation
of from can be quantified by the projection of on or
by some norm . We start by maximizing projected
on , i.e., the real valued part of

(24)

where denotes the unit sphere and

(25)

is a representation of the desired radiated field in the current

density on the structure.
Fig. 3. Upper bounds on the partial gain Q-factor quotient
for currents confined to planar rectangles with sides and
This gives the convex optimization problem
for using (22). The bound is nor-
malized with , where is the radius of the smallest circumscribing sphere,
i.e., . (a) maximal . The resulting current distribution
is shown for , and . (b) resulting for lossless
antennas. The radiation patterns with their mode expansions (48) are depicted (26)
for and , where it is seen that and dominates,
cf., (50). (c) resulting for lossless antennas.
It is common to expand the radiated far field in vector spherical
harmonics, , or modes, see Appendix B, i.e.,

the and cases. There is also a decrease in the Q

for the case except for the larger structures, ,
(27)
where is very low.
We expand the far-field in spherical modes to analyze the ra-
diated field, see Appendix B. It is noted that the radiation pattern where is sufficiently large [29] and the expansion coeffi-
for the case is dominated by mode number , i.e., cients are
or an -directed electric dipole (50), see the histograms in
Fig. 3(b) for the magnitude distribution at . There (28)
are also small contributions from higher order modes as ana-
lyzed in Section IV.C. The improved performance for the
case is due to the additional excitation of a -directed magnetic and similarly for the expansion coefficients of . Here, the
dipole, . This is consistent with the explicit solu- multi-index for
tion for small mixed mode antennas in (20), see also [10]. , and is introduced to simplify the notation.
1114 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

The index, , is also ordered such that

, see Appendix B. The current in (26) is

(29)

where denotes the regular spherical vector waves, see

Fig. 4 and Appendix B.
We can also minimize the stored energy for a radiated field of
the form , i.e., Fig. 5. Q-factors for a lossless planar rectangle (side lengths and ) with
electric and magnetic dipole radiation patterns using (26) and
(33). The radiation patterns with their mode expansions (48) are depicted for
, where it is seen that and dominate for the and
cases, respectively.

(30)
to but not exact dipoles. The radiation patterns are depicted for
where quantifies the deviation of the desired radiation pattern . It is hard to distinguish between the patterns for
and the least-square norm is used for simplicity. It is conve- the cases, but the partial directivity for the projection case
nient to expand the radiated field in spherical vector waves and and is lower than for for the case
rewrite the deviation as in the region around . The radiation patterns differ
more for the case, where again the projection formulation
(26) offers the lowest .
(31)
D. Maximal for
where The Chu bound [3] shows that the radiation is dominated by
dipole modes for small antennas . Consequently, the
directivity is low, i.e., for single mode antennas and
in general bounded as for mixed electric and magnetic
dipole modes. Higher directivity requires higher order modes
that imply a higher , e.g., the of quadrupole modes is propor-
tional to for . It is known to be difficult to design
(32) and utilize high (or super-) directivity for small antennas [2],
[30]–[33]. It is hence interesting to investigate the bound
for antennas with directivities for some .
This gives the optimization problem These bounds give an estimate of the increased Q-factor for su-
perdirective antennas.
The partial directivity (3) is included in the optimization
problem (23) with the constraint giving

(33)
(34)

It is noted that arbitrary weight functions and norms can be used where the factor is due to the normalization of and
in (33). .
A planar rectangle with is considered to illustrate The bounds are illustrated in Fig. 6 for planar rectangles with
the results for given far-fields (26) and (33). The factors are and for the polarization . The constraints
depicted in Fig. 5 for projections (26) and norm bounds (33) for and are considered for
the cases of the -directed electric dipole and -directed and , respectively. These values for are chosen
magnetic dipole patterns, see Fig. 4. as they require excitation of higher order modes. The addition
We observe that the is lower for the electric dipole mode of the constraints reduces for small structures when the
than the magnetic dipole mode. The Q is also lowest for the constraint is active. The resulting partial directivities are seen in
projection cases (26). Moreover, tend to increase as de- Fig. 6(b) together with the mode distribution for .
creases, i.e., the lowest is for radiation patterns that are close The superdirectivity for the cases are due to
GUSTAFSSON AND NORDEBO: OPTIMAL ANTENNA CURRENTS FOR Q, SUPERDIRECTIVITY, AND RADIATION PATTERNS 1115

Fig. 7. Lower bounds on the Q-factor for lossless superdirective antennas

having constrained to a planar rectangle with side
lengths and using (34). The radiation patterns with their mode
expansions (48) are depicted for , where it is seen that the radiation
patterns are composed of many higher order modes.

contribute to the radiation but we can only control the currents

in the volume , see Fig. 1. Here, we consider the case
where the structure is perfectly electric conducting
(PEC), see Fig. 8. The induced currents on the surface of are
determined from the electric field integral equation (EFIE) that
has the matrix elements [25]

(35)

where the similarities with (5), (6), (7), and (11) are noted. The
integration in (35) is over the PEC surface of the structure. The
driving sources of the EFIE are confined to the region and
they are unknown. Moreover the EFIE is not necessarily valid
Fig. 6. Upper bounds on the partial gain Q-factor quotient for antennas with in . Decompose the current density as , where
for a planar rectangle with side lengths is the current density in . The EFIE gives two
and . (a) . (b), (c) resulting and for lossless antennas. The rows corresponding to test functions in and . Here, the first
radiation patterns with their mode expansions (48) are depicted for ,
where it is seen that higher order modes appear in addition to for
row is unknown but the second row gives the constraint
the superdirective cases.
(36)

the excitation of electric quadrupole terms. This also explains that can be added as a constraint to the convex optimization
the increased Q-factors. problems in this paper, e.g., the bound in (22).
Fig. 7 illustrates the corresponding results for using It is convenient to use (36) to express the induced current den-
and radiation in the directions with polariza- sities in , i.e., and eliminate
tions for a lossless structure. Here, the cost of in the optimization problem. Decompose the matrices and
superdirectivity is clearly seen. The Q-factor is highest for the according to
case where the symmetry causes the current to radiate
in both the and directions. The mode expansion indicates (37)
that many higher order modes are excited. The cases
have pencil beams and much lower factors. The end-fire case
that gives
has the lowest with for . The re-
sulting current distributions are oscillatory as for superdirective
arrays [2].

E. Embedded Antennas (38)

It is useful to analyze the case when the antenna is embedded and
in a structure. In this case the currents on the entire structure, , (39)
1116 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

Fig. 8. Illustration of antennas embedded in planar metallic rectangles. Arbi-

trary currents in and induced currents on the metallic structure
. (a) antenna region in the center. (b) antenna region in the upper corner.

Fig. 10. Bounds on and resulting for antennas embedded in planar

metallic rectangles. Arbitrary currents in and induced currents
in with the antenna region in the upper corner with ,
Fig. 9. Bound on for planar strip dipoles with length and width see Fig. 8(b). The results without induced currents are also shown. (a) bounds
. Arbitrary currents in the central region, with length , of on using (40). (b) resulting for a lossless structure.
the strips for and PEC in .

utilizing the entire structure. It is also noted that the resonance

The optimization problem on becomes of the first characteristic mode [34] is at . The cor-
responding bounds for the cases without the surrounded PEC
structure, i.e., for rectangles with size times , are also
depicted in Fig. 10. Here, it is seen that the induced currents
(40) on the surrounding PEC structure improves the performance
compared to the cases without the surrounding
We illustrate the bound on , normalized with , for PEC. Consider e.g., and where and
embedded antennas using the structures in Fig. 8. The strip with and without the PEC structure, respectively. The
dipole in Fig. 8(a) has length and width . Let corresponding values for and are
the center, be the region, , where the currents are and .
optimized. In Fig. 9, we observe that the performance decreases
with decreasing except for , where the center V. CONCLUSION
fed strip dipole is self-resonant. This shows that the induced We show that several performance limits for antennas can be
currents are optimal for short dipoles. This is consistent with formulated as convex optimization problems. Standard software
the analysis of strip dipoles in [10]. Note that only having [15], [22] is used to solve the convex optimization problems.
currents in corresponds to a shorter dipole, so it is clear The results for are consistent with the bounds in [6], [10].
that the induced currents on the surrounding PEC structure, , The new bounds offer physical insight into the design of small
improves the performance compared to only having currents in antennas, see also [10]. They also offer the possibility of sys-
. tematic studies of how and directivity are related for small
The second example is for antennas embedded in a planar superdirective antennas. Moreover, properties of antennas em-
PEC rectangle with length and width . We con- bedded in structures, such as mobile phones and other terminals,
sider the cases with arbitrary feed currents in rectangular re- are discussed.
gions in the upper corner of the structure with size times It is important to realize that the convex optimization problem
for , see 8(b). Note that feed region is not determines an optimal current distribution. This current is in
necessarily PEC and only modeled by its current density. The general not unique although the minimum of the convex opti-
quotient is optimized for and using (40), see mization problems is unique. It is also not known if there are
Fig. 10. We observe that the performance deteriorates for small antennas performing close to the bounds except for the case of
regions and small antennas. There is however a region around electric dipole type antennas [6]. Moreover, the optimal perfor-
where the performance is close to the case of mance can be useful in global optimization of antennas [17].
GUSTAFSSON AND NORDEBO: OPTIMAL ANTENNA CURRENTS FOR Q, SUPERDIRECTIVITY, AND RADIATION PATTERNS 1117

APPENDIX A APPENDIX B
POLARIZABILITY MODE EXPANSION
The physical bounds on in [5], [6] are expressed in The radiated electromagnetic field is expanded in
the polarizability of the antenna structure. In [10], it is also spherical vector waves [29] (or modes) outside a circum-
shown that the bound on small antennas (12) can be expressed scribing sphere. The corresponding far field is expanded in
in the polarizability. Here, we further show that the solution of spherical vector harmonics as
the convex optimization problem (14) using (15) is identical to
computing the high-contrast polarizability [10] using Galerkin’s (48)
method [26].
The high-contrast polarizability for the polarization can be
determined from the first moment of the induced normalized giving for the expansion coefficients in (32),
charge density as where is the spatial coordinate, , and the
wavenumber. The multi index for
(41) , and is introduced to simplify
the notation. The index, , is also ordered such that
, see [35].
Here, we keep the notation with complex conjugates on to There are a few alternative definitions of the spherical vector
simplify the comparison with (15), although it is sufficient to waves in the literature [29], [36], [37]. Here, we follow [36] and
consider real valued unit vectors to determine the electrostatic use and as basis functions in the azimuthal co-
polarizability. The charge density is the solution of the integral ordinate. This choice is motivated by the interpretation of the
equation fields related to the first 6 modes as the fields from different
Hertzian dipoles. For , we use spherical vector har-
(42) monics

(49)
where the constant is determined from the constraint of zero
total charge . It turns out that it is convenient
and where denotes the spher-
to set for comparison with (15). Expand the charge
ical harmonics [37]. The modes labeled by (odd ) iden-
density in basis functions , where
tify TE modes (or magnetic -poles) and the terms labeled by
and are matrices, to rewrite (41) as
(even ) correspond to TM modes (or electric -poles).
Moreover, the dipoles corresponding to are directed in
(43)
the -direction, in the -direction, and in the
-direction having the explicit representation
Solving the integral equation (42) with the Galerkin’s method
[26] gives the linear system of equations

(50)
(44)

where the matrix is

where . The regular, , spherical vector

waves are given by and
(45)
, where denotes the spherical
Bessel function.
Finally, the constraint of zero total charge is
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Mats Gustafsson (M’05) received the M.Sc. degree
in engineering physics and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
tromagnetic theory from Lund University, Sweden,
in 1994 and 2000, respectively.
In 2005, he was appointed was appointed Docent
and, in 2011, Professor of electromagnetic theory
at Lund University, Sweden. He co-founded the
company Phase Holographic Imaging AB in 2004.
His research interests are in scattering and antenna
theory and inverse scattering and imaging with
applications in microwave tomography and digital
holography. He has written over 60 peer reviewed journal papers and over 75
conference papers.
Prof. Gustafsson received the best antenna poster prize at EuCAP 2007 and
the IEEE Schelkunoff Transactions Prize Paper Award 2010. He serves as an
AP-S Distinguished Lecturer for 2013–2015.
Sven Nordebo (SM’05) received the M.S. degree
in electrical engineering from the Royal Institute
of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1989 and
the Ph.D. degree in signal processing from Luleå
University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden, in 1995.
Since 2002, he is a Professor of signal processing
at the School of Computer Science, Physics and
Mathematics, Linnæus University. His research
interests are in statistical signal processing, electro-
magnetic wave propagation, inverse problems and
imaging.