A HYBRID METHOD FOR THE SOLUTION OF SCATTERING FROM INHOMOGENEOUS DIELECTRIC CYLINDERS OF ARBITRARY SHAPE

A hybrid moment method/edge-element method (MM/EEM) is presented. The formulation is quite general; however, the method is applied to two-di mensional scattering problems. Such a hybrid formulation unites the ad vantages of finite and integral-equation methods and is able to handle unbounded problems in which complex inhomogeneities are present. The edge-element method is easily coupled to the moment method, and it doe sn't introduce spurious modes. The equivalence principle is used to di vide the original problem into two separate problems: an unbounded hom ogeneous one in which the moment method is used and a bounded inhomoge neous one in which the edge-element method is used. Several examples i nvolving two-dimensional scattering with TE and TM plane wave excitati on are presented. The RCS is computed and compared to results obtained by other numerical techniques.