Efficient method of moments formulation for large PEC scattering problems using asymptotic phasefront extraction (APE)

A method is introduced for reducing the exorbitant dependence on computer storage and solution time in the method of moments (MoM) for electrically large electromagnetic (EM) scattering problems. The unknown surface currents on large, smooth parts of a perfect electrical conductor (PEC) scatterer are expressed by an efficient set of linearly phased surface current basis functions. The phasefront characteristics of the surface currents are numerically extracted from known current samples obtained from a lower-frequency solution of the same configuration. The use of such basis functions for efficiently representing the surface currents that are constructed in terms of linearly phased currents at higher frequencies is justified by considering the form of the surface currents predicted by high-frequency asymptotic ray methods. The procedure for extracting the current phasefronts is purely numerical, obviating computationally expensive and nonrobust operations such as ray-tracing, and thus, is amenable to general purpose scattering codes. The new MoM with linearly phased basis functions is shown to greatly relieve the storage and solution time of the conventional MoM while accurately reproducing the induced surface currents and scattered fields of some chosen targets.