The physical optics method in electromagnetic scattering

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to analyze the physical optics method as applied to electromagnetic scattering theory and to point out its physical and mathematical drawbacks. The main conclusions are (1) that the boundary values assumed by physical optics lead to electromagnetic fields that do not satisfy the finiteness of energy condition and, as a consequence, that integral representations of these fields cannot be obtained via the divergence theorem; (2) that the commonly accepted representations are not solutions of the physical optics problem because they fail to reproduce the assumed discontinuities of the fields on the scatterer. Despite the above conclusions, the present work should not be construed as an attempt to discredit the method but rather as an effort toward a better understanding of it. As it is well known, there have been a number of occasions in which physical optics has yielded quite satisfactory results.

A wave propagation model based on Monte-Carlo particle-tracing

“…Computation of the diffraction effect is indeed included by the radiation integral. Application of physical optics methods [6], to compute electromagnetic wave scattering, shows the difficulty of surface integral representation. Our method simplifies current computation by considering the Huygens currents with the assumption of non-diffusion over the surface.…”

Effect of Atmospheric Propagation in RCS Predictions

“…The dimensions of the scatterers we will consider are much greater than the size of the wavelength so in order to obtain the RCS σ we will make use of the physical optics (PO) limit [17][18][19][20][21]. We consider two types of targets that are situated at a given height y and range x and determine the RCS 'observed' by a radar at a given angle.…”

pRediCS: A new GO-PO--based ray launching simulator for the calculation of electromagnetic scattering and RCS from electrically large and complex structures

“…The scattered field calculation from the last bounce point, P n (x n y n z n ) , is accomplished with the help of the PO approach [25], as demonstrated in Figure 1. According to the PO theory, the incoming electric field for themth ray, ⃗ E m n , produces an equivalent surface current density of ⃗ J m (S A ), which can be approximated as:…”