Distributed source identification for wave equations: an observer-based approach

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a wave equation on a bounded interval where the initial conditions are known (are zero) and we are rather interested in identifying an unknown source term $q(x)$ thanks to the measurement output $y$ which is the Neumann derivative on one of the boundaries. We use a back-and-forth iterative procedure and construct well-chosen observers which allow to retrieve $q$ from $y$ in the minimal observation time.