Nodal and divergence-conforming boundary-element methods applied to electromagnetic scattering problems

We propose the use of Whitney elements of second degree to build interpolation divergence-conforming functions for the boundary-element method (BEM). Both nodal and divergence-conforming BEMs for three-dimensional electromagnetic scattering problems are analyzed. The scattering of a perfect electric conducting body is computed by both methods and a comparison among them shows that divergence-conforming boundary elements work better than nodal boundary ones.