EVALUATION OF MULTIPLE DIFFRACTION INTEGRALS - COMPUTATIONAL SPEED AND ACCURACY CONSIDERATIONS

The paper examines the computational efficiency of three methods of ev aluating multiple diffraction integrals commonly encountered in electr omagnetic problems, The solution based on the repeated integrals of th e error function originally derived by Vogler is elegant, relatively e asy to program, computationally inefficient, but accurate. For practic al applications, the computational technique used must be amenable to rapid evaluation and yield an acceptable degree of accuracy. Following the analysis of Saunders and Bonar for propagation over multiple knif e-edge models of building rows of irregular height and spacing, the Mo nte-Carlo integration technique is extended to consider three-dimensio nal knife-edge and plateau diffraction.