Effect of loading on field uniformity: Energy diffusion in reverberant environments

In reverberant electromagnetic environments such as reverberation chambers, shielding enclosures, vehicles and buildings, the electromagnetic energy density is often assumed to be uniform and the direction of arrival of electromagnetic waves (Poynting vector) and their polarisation is assumed uniformly distributed. This is the basis of the power balance method for electromagnetic coupling analysis and much of the theory of reverberation chambers. However significant field inhomogeneity is often encountered in practice when significant losses are present. In this paper we show why this must be so when an energy flow exists from the source of energy to absorptive elements, and how the non-uniformity can be determined using a diffusion based solution. The diffusion based solution, though not as computationally efficient as the power balance method, is still much more efficient than a full-wave approach.