Current and charge Integral equation formulation

A new stable frequency domain surface integral equation formulation is proposed for the three dimensional electromagnetic scattering of composite metallic and dielectric objects. The developed formulation does not suffer from the low frequency breakdown and leads to a well balanced and stable system on a wide frequency band. Surface charge densities are used as unknowns in addition to the traditional surface current densities. The balance of the system is achieved by using normalized field quantities and by enforcing the continuity of the fields across the boundaries with carefully chosen scaling factors. The linear dependence between the currents and charges is taken into account with an integral operator, and the linear dependence in charges is removed with the deflation method. A combined field integral equation form of the formulation is proposed to remove the internal resonance problem associated to the closed metallic objects. Due to the good balance in the new formulation, fast converging iterative solutions on a very wide frequency band can be obtained. The new formulation and its convergence is verified with numerical examples.     

位积分方程组矩量法用于精确计算非均匀介质柱的电磁散射

位积分方程组的主要特点是以电磁位为未知函数,这些未知函数在具有不同电磁参数的介质分界面处是连续的,因而在矩量法的实现过程中能够非常方便地应用高阶插值基函数来展开未知函数,以便获得高精度的解。但是,经典的点匹配方案使该模型的数值稳定性较差。本文用位积分方程组矩量法模型计算任意截面非均匀介质柱的电磁散射,采用三角形离散方案和高阶插值基函数,在测试过程中应用新提出的测试方法,克服了原位方程组矩量法模型的数值不稳定性。对矩量法矩阵中自阻抗元素的奇异性处理方法也作了详细介绍。文中提供的数值结果表明,该方法是精确、稳定的。     

A Procedure for Calculating Fields Inside Arbitrarily Shaped, Inhomogeneous Dielectric Bodies Using Linear Basis Functions with the Moment Method

A moment method for calculating the internal field distributions of arbitrarily shaped, inhomogeneous dielectric bodies is presented. A free-space Green's function integral equation is used with 3-D linear basis functions to describe the field variation within cells. Polyhedral volume elements are used to model the scatterer's curvature realistically without an excessive number of unknowns. A new testing procednre, called the modified Galerkin's method, is developed and used to obtain the matrix equations with less CPU time but greater accuracy. Calculated internal field distributions of dielectric spheres, spheroids, and a composite model of a rat are compared with other calculations and experimental data. The agreement is generally good.     

Method of moments solution for a printed patch/slot antenna on a thin finite dielectric substrate using the volume Integral equation

In this paper, a volume integral equation (VIE)-based modeling method suitable for a patch or slot antenna on a thin finite dielectric substrate is developed and tested. Two new key features of the method are the use of proper dielectric basis functions and proper VIE conditioning, close to the metal surface, where the surface boundary condition of the zero tangential E -component must be extended into adjacent tetrahedra. The extended boundary condition is the exact result for the piecewise-constant dielectric basis functions. The latter operation allows one to achieve a good accuracy with one layer of tetrahedra for a thin dielectric substrate and thereby greatly reduces computational cost. The use of low-order basis functions also implies the use of low-order integration schemes and faster filling of the impedance matrix. For some common patch/slot antennas, the VIE-based modeling approach is found to give an error of about 1% or less in the resonant frequency for one-layer tetrahedral meshes with a relatively small number of unknowns. This error is obtained by comparison with fine finite-element method (FEM) simulations, or with measurements, or with the analytical mode matching approach. Hence it is competitive with both the method of moments surface integral equation approach and with the FEM approach for the printed antennas on thin dielectric substrates.     

TM scattering by an impedance sheet extension of a paraboliccylinder

An integral equation and method of moments (MM) solution are presented for the two-dimensional (2-D) problem of transverse magnetic (TM) scattering by an impedance-sheet extension of a perfectly conducting parabolic cylinder. An integral equation is formulated for a dielectric cylinder of general cross section in the presence of a perfectly conducting parabolic cylinder. It is then shown that the solution for a general dielectric cylinder considerably simplifies for the special case of TM scattering by a thin multilayered dielectric strip that can be represented as an impedance sheet. The solution is termed an MM/Green's function solution, where the unknowns in the integral equation are the electric surface currents flowing in the impedance sheet; the presence of the parabolic cylinder is accounted for by including its Green's function in the kernel of the integral equation. The MM solution is briefly reviewed, and expressions for the elements in the matrix equation and the scattered fields are given. Sample numerical results are provided     

求解各向异性介质涂覆的薄壳元-边界积分法

为了克服传统有限元－边界积分方法在分析薄涂敷目标时采用四面体单元离散导致未知量非常多及需要大量的计算机存储量的缺点,采用薄壳单元（SHELL）与边界积分方法相结合分析各向异性涂敷目标的电磁特性.薄壳单元可以大大减少未知量数目,并可将体积分转化为面积分,使计算量大为减少.用薄壳元－边界积分方法考察了不同厚度及媒质涂敷时对电磁散射特性的影响,证明了该方法是精确的,在减少未知量、存储量和计算时间上具有极大的优势.     

Scattering From Axisymmetric Dielectric Scatterers: A Hybrid Method of Solving the Surface Integral Equations

Scattering of EM waves from homogeneous dielectric scatterers is formulated in terms of two surface integral equations, for the components of the total electric and magnetic fields that are tangential to the surface of the scatterer. Two equivalent systems of such equations may be used, corresponding to the two types of Maue's integral equations for perfectly conducting scatterers. The appearance of surface divergence terms of both components in the dielectric case, in addition to the unknowns themselves, causes serious complications when the method of solution is based on some kind of division of the scatterer surface into patches; these complications become particularly apparent in the process of evaluating the locally dominant self-patch contribution to the surface integrals. They can be effectively avoided if a third equivalent system of surface integral equations is used, arising from a proper summation of the original two systems; then, the two singular Green functions that appear in the surface divergence terms are replaced by their non-singular difference and this, followed by a further transformation of these critical terms, results in the complete elimination of the surface divergence terms. The self-patch contribution can then be evaluated analytically and this helps reduce the size of the matrix, via which the values of the tangential field components at the patch centers are calculated. Scatterers of considerable electrical size, for instance spheres with ka of the order of 10 or 15, can then be treated with moderate size matrices. Numerical results for spheres, sphere-cone-spheres and other shapes are obtained and compared with results from other methods. Apart from spheres, results for other shapes are very rare and limited to small sizes in the literature.     

Single integral equation for electromagnetic scattering bythree-dimensional homogeneous dielectric objects

A single integral equation formulation for electromagnetic scattering by three-dimensional (3-D) homogeneous dielectric objects is developed. In this formulation, a single effective electric current on the surface S of a dielectric object is used to generate the scattered fields in the interior region. The equivalent electric and magnetic currents for the exterior region are obtained by enforcing the continuity of the tangential fields across S. A single integral equation for the effective electric current is obtained by enforcing the vanishing of the total field due to the exterior equivalent currents inside S. The single integral equation is solved by the method of moments. Numerical results for a dielectric sphere obtained with this method are in good agreement with the exact results. Furthermore, the convergence speed of the iterative solution of the matrix equation in this formulation is significantly greater than that of the coupled integral equations formulation     

Efficient analysis of electromagnetic radiation from microstrip antenna using volume-surface current contunuity method

The Volume-Surface Current Continuity Method (VSCCM) is presented to analyze electromagnetic radiation from microstrip antenna. The microstrip antenna is discretized into small triangular patches on conducting surface and tetrahedral volume cells in dielectric region. The Method of Moments (MoM) is applied to solve the integral equation. An equation contains the restriction relation between the volume and surface current coefficient is derived from the current continuity equation at those parts where the conducting surface is in contact with the dielectric material. A simple equivalent strip model is introduced in the treatment of the feeding probe in VSCCM. The VSCCM can reduce the unknowns required to be solved in MoM, as well as the condition number of the matrix equation. Numerical results are given to validate the accuracy and efficiency of this method.     

On the determination of resonant modes of dielectric objects using surface Integral equations

Although surface integral equations have been extensively used for solving the scattering problem of arbitrarily shaped dielectric objects, when applied to the resonance problem, there are still some issues not fully addressed by the literature. In this paper, the method of moments with Rao-Wilton-Glisson basis functions is applied to the electric field integral equation (EFIE) for solving the resonance problem of dielectric objects. The resonant frequency is obtained by searching for the minimum of the reciprocal of the condition number of the impedance matrix in the complex frequency plane, and the modal field distribution is obtained through singular value decomposition (SVD). The determinant of the impedance matrix is not used since it is difficult to find its roots. For the exterior EFIE, the original basis functions are used as testing functions; for the interior EFIE, the basis functions rotated by 90/spl deg/ are used as testing functions. To obtain an accurate modal field solution, the impedance matrix needs to be reduced by half before SVD is applied to it. Numerical results are given and compared with those obtained by using the volume integral equation.     

Method of radar detection and identification of metal and dielectric objects with resonant sizes located in dielectric medium

Mathematical model of a radar detection and identification system to be used for finding different objects buried in the ground or in other dielectric media is considered. In the suggested model scattering characteristics of 3D resonant objects are calculated by solving 2nd kind Fredholm integral equations for equivalent current densities on the object??s surface. Based on the obtained results we derive a method of detection and identification for specific types of objects which incorporates analysis of their natural resonant frequencies. Potentialities of the developed method for detection and identification of different types of mines are estimated.     

Scattering analysis of a large body with deep cavities

A numerical scheme is presented for simulating electromagnetic scattering from a large and arbitrarily shaped body, coated with inhomogeneous composite materials, with large and deep cavities. This numerical scheme employs the higher order vector finite-element method (FEM) to discretize the fields inside the cavities and coatings and the higher order boundary integral (BI) method to terminate the FEM computational domain. A highly efficient special solver is designed to eliminate the unknowns inside the cavities, which yields a computed relation (CR) matrix over the cavity's aperture between the tangential electric and magnetic fields. This CR matrix is then combined with the finite element-boundary integral (FE-BI) matrix equation to form a complete linear system for the discrete fields everywhere in the computational domain. The resulting system is solved iteratively using a novel preconditioner derived by replacing the BI with a corresponding absorbing boundary condition (ABC).     

A Spectral Integral Method and Hybrid SIM/FEM for Layered Media

This paper first presents a spectral integral method (SIM) for electromagnetic scattering from homogeneous dielectric and perfectly electric conducting objects straddling several layers of a multilayered medium. It then uses this SIM as an exact radiation boundary condition to truncate the computational domain in the finite-element method (FEM) to form a hybrid SIM/FEM, which is applicable to arbitrary inhomogeneous objects. Due to the high accuracy of the SIM, the sampling density on the radiation boundary requires less than five points per wavelength to achieve 1% accuracy. The efficiency and accuracy of the developed methods have been demonstrated with several numerical experiments for the TM_z case. The TE_z case can be obtained by duality     

Analyzing low-frequency electromagnetic scattering from a compositeobject

In this paper, we present a method for solving electromagnetic scattering from a composite object at low frequencies using the method of moments (MoM) and loop-tree basis. Many applications involve composite objects which consist of several homogeneous regions. The loop-tree basis used for analyzing scattering from a homogeneous body at low frequencies could not be directly applied to analyze the low-frequency scattering from a composite object. In general, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find a set of loop-tree basis functions that is valid for the structures on both sides of the interfaces. In this paper, we treat a composite object as a limiting case of multibody problem so that we could setup the MoM equation using the loop-tree basis found on each single body. A process is then developed to eliminate the redundant unknowns. The proposed method makes it possible to analyze low-frequency scattering from an arbitrary composite object. The validity and applications are illustrated with representative numerical examples     

Higher order hierarchical Legendre basis functions for electromagnetic modeling

This paper presents a new hierarchical basis of arbitrary order for integral equations solved with the method of moments (MoM). The basis is derived from orthogonal Legendre polynomials which are modified to impose continuity of vector quantities between neighboring elements while maintaining most of their desirable features. Expressions are presented for wire, surface, and volume elements but emphasis is given to the surface elements. In this case, the new hierarchical basis leads to a near-orthogonal expansion of the unknown surface current and implicitly an orthogonal expansion of the surface charge. In addition, all higher order terms in the expansion have two vanishing moments. In contrast to existing formulations, these properties allow the use of very high-order basis functions without introducing ill-conditioning of the resulting MoM matrix. Numerical results confirm that the condition number of the MoM matrix obtained with this new basis is much lower than existing higher order interpolatory and hierarchical basis functions. As a consequence of the excellent condition numbers, we demonstrate that even very high-order MoM systems, e.g., tenth order, can be solved efficiently with an iterative solver in relatively few iterations.     

Analysis of low frequency scattering from penetrable scatterers

A method is presented for solving the surface integral equation using the method of moments (MoM) at very low frequencies, which finds applications in geoscience. The nature of the Helmholtz decomposition leads the authors to choose loop-tree basis functions to represent the surface current. Careful analysis of the frequency scaling property of each operator allows them to introduce a frequency normalization scheme to reduce the condition number of the MoM matrix. After frequency normalization, the MoM matrix can be solved using LU decomposition. The poor spectral properties of the matrix, however, makes it ill-suited for an iterative solver. A basis rearrangement is used to improve this property of the MoM matrix. The basis function rearrangement (BFR), which involves inverting the connection matrix, can be viewed as a pre-conditioner. The complexity of BFR is reduced to O(N), allowing this method to be combined with iterative solvers. Both rectilinear and curvilinear patches have been used in the simulations. The use of curvilinear patches reduces the number of unknowns significantly, thereby making the algorithm more efficient. This method is capable of solving Maxwell's equations from quasistatic to electrodynamic frequency range. This capability is of great importance in geophysical applications because the sizes of the simulated objects can range from a small fraction of a wavelength to several wavelengths     

Surface integral formulation for calculating conductor anddielectric losses of various transmission structures

The power-loss method, along with a surface integral formulation, has been used to compute the attenuation constant in microstrip and coplanar structures. This method can be used for the analysis of both open and closed structures. Using the surface equivalence principle, the waveguide walls are replaced by equivalent electric surface currents and dielectric surfaces are replaced by equivalent electric and magnetic surface currents. Enforcing the appropriate boundary condition, and E-field integral equation (EFIE) is developed for these currents. Method of moments with pulse expansion and point matching testing procedure is used to transform the integral equation into a matrix one. The relationship between the propagation constant and frequency is found from the minimum eigenvalue of the moment matrix. The eigenvector pertaining to the minimum eigenvalue gives the unknown electric and magnetic surface currents     

Green's function for arbitrarily shaped dielectric bodies of revolution

In this paper, a solution is developed to calculate the electric field at one point in space due to an electric dipole exciting an arbitrarily shaped dielectric body of revolution (BOR). Specifically, the electric field is determined from the solution of coupled surface integral equations (SIE) for the induced surface electric and magnetic currents on the dielectric body excited by an elementary electric current dipole source. Both the interior and exterior fields to the dielectric BOR may be accurately evaluated via this approach. For a highly lossy dielectric body, the numerical Green's function is also obtainable from an approximate integral equation (AIE) based on a surface boundary condition. If this equation is solved by the method of moments, significant numerical efficiency over SIE is realized. Numerical results obtained by both SIE and AIE approaches agree with the exact solution for the special case of a dielectric sphere. With this numerical Green's function, the complicated radiation and scattering problems in the presence of an arbitrarily shaped dielectric BOR are readily solvable by the method of moments.     

A Hybrid SIM-SEM Method for 3-D Electromagnetic Scattering Problems

A new method combining the spectral integral method and spectral element method (SIM-SEM) is proposed to simulate 3-D electromagnetic scattering from inhomogeneous objects. In this hybrid technique (a special case of the finite element boundary integral (FEM-BI) combination), the SEM with the mixed-order curl conforming vector Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) basis functions are used to represent the interior electric field with high accuracy, while the SIM on a cuboid surface is used as an exact radiation boundary condition. The Toeplitz property of the SIM matrix is utilized to reduce the memory and CPU time costs in an iterative solver by using the fast Fourier transform algorithm. Unlike the traditional FEM-BI combination where the BI portion usually dominates the computational complexity, the computational costs are much lower in the SIM-SEM method. Numerical results verify the accuracy and capability of this method, confirming that the SIM-SEM method is a good alternative for solving scattering problems from inhomogeneous objects.      

A new procedure of point-matching method for calculating theabsorption and scattering of lossy dielectric objects

A method of numerically calculating the electromagnetic scattering and absorption by dielectric objects of high aspect ratios and composite geometrics has been developed. The solution procedure is based on expanding the scattered and internal fields in terms of multiple spherical vector wave functions, using point-matching to satisfy the boundary conditions and the least-square method to solve the resulting system of equations. The unique feature of this technique is that it utilizes multiple spherical expansions to describe the fields both inside and outside the object. The various parameters used to examine the convergence of the solution are discussed; they include the number of subdomain expansions interior and exterior to the object, the number of terms in each expansion and the advantages of the least-square method of solution. The new method was found suitable for making calculations for objects with aspect ratios as high as nine, and even for objects with composite geometries, including a capped cylinder and an object that consists of a spherical and a prolate spheroidal section. Numerical results were compared with results based on volume integral equations and method of moments, and excellent agreement was found