A 3D parabolic equation method for knife-edge diffraction modeling

A 3D parabolic equation (PE) method has been developed to model the propagation of electromagnetic waves over knife-edge obstacles on a perfectly conducting terrain. Under the assumption of forward propagation, the Helmholtz equation for each potential component could be approximated by a wide-angle PE. Then the split-step Fourier transform algorithm is used to march the potentials from one aperture plan to the next. Finally, in order to validate the proposed method, several numerical simulations of the diffraction of a knife-edge obstacle are made by using the 3DPE method, the 2DPE model and the Huygens-Fresnel principle respectively, and as a result, the examples demonstrate that the proposed 3DPE method performs well for knife-edge diffraction modeling.