A Vector Wave Function Solution to the Problem of Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves from an Infinitely Thin Perfectly Conducting Disc

Abstract

Over several decades, electromagnetic scattering from an infinitely thin perfectly conducting circular disc has strongly attracted researchers. Exact solutions for this problem in terms of spheroidal wave functions have been known since the 1950’s. However, due to the lack of computational capacity in those days, they were not practical enough to compute. As a result of this approximate methods for simulation of electromagnetic scattering from the disc have been preferred. Nowadays we possess over computers which have high computational capacities, so that in theory the numerical computation of these exact solutions should not be a problem at all. Therefore this work focuses on an exact solution method, which was given by Flammer in 1953, who used vector wave functions in the oblate spheroidal coordinate system to formulate the scattering problem. The thesis presents a numerical algorithm based on this method and a corresponding simulation program, which can be used to produce reference values for radar cross section (RCS) of the disc.