PDE TECHNIQUES FOR SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF RADAR SCATTERING BY A BODY OF REVOLUTION

In this paper we discuss two partial differential equation (PDE) techniques, viz., the finite difference (FD) and the finite element (FEM) methods, for solving the problem of radar scattering by a body of revolution (BOR). The formulation of the BOR problem is based upon the use of the coupled azimuthal potentials (CAP's), introduced by Morgan and Mei, that allow one to reduce the vector field problem to the solution of two coupled scalar wave equations. An important contribution of the paper is the introduction of a novel method for mesh truncation, for both the FD and FEM meshes, that is based upon an asymptotic representation of electromagnetic fields given by Wilcox. Numerical results are presented for some representative geometries to illustrate the application of the PDE methods and some observations regarding the comparative performance of the two methods are included.