Most first kind integral equations are ill-posed, and obtaining their numerical solution often requires solving a linear system of algebraic equations of large condition number, which may be difficult or impossible. This article proposes a regularization-direct method to numerically solve first kind Fredholm integral equations. The vector forms of block-pulse functions and related properties are applied to formulate the direct method and reduce the integral equation to a linear system of algebraic equations. We include a regularization scheme to overcome the ill-posedness of integral equation and obtain a stable numerical solution. Some test problems are solved using the proposed regularization-direct method to illustrate its efficiency for solving first kind Fredholm integral equations.

Keywords: first kind Fredholm integral equation, regularization method, block-pulse functions, vector forms, numerical solution