Backscattering from resistive strips

Strips made of a resistive sheet material have lower backscattering cross sections than the corresponding perfectly conducting strips, and this is true in particular when the illumination is edge-on with the electric vector parallel to the edge. Attention is focused on this case. Using the moment method applied to an appropriate integral equation, data are obtained for the surface field and backscattered far field of a resistive strip for a variety of strip widthswand uniform resistancesR. The front- and rear-edge contributions to the far field are then extracted. It is shown that for strips whose width is greater than about a half-wavelength the former is the same as for a half-plane having the same resistance, whereas the latter is proportional to the square of the current at that point on the half-plane corresponding to the rear edge of the strip. The implications of these results on the selection of a strip resistance for low backscattering are discussed.