Astigmatic beam tracing for GTD/UTD methods in 3-D complex environments

Asymptotic techniques are usually employed for electromagnetic analysis of large and complex scenarios. Determination of ray paths from source to obse rvation region is the first stage of a computation. Beam tracing methods, f ormerly developed for computer graphics, ensure continuous scenario coverag e overcoming drawbacks of usual ray tracing. In this paper these are extend ed for application to electromagnetic analysis and improved to solve for mu ltiple order interactions with scatterers by resorting to the astigmatic be am scheme. Wedge diffraction is solved recursively by minimising an aberrat ion error. A numerical analysis has been performed for comparisons with a b ackward ray tracer showing a good agreement of results.