If an object is a reasonably good conductor of electricity, radiowaves
do not travel through it. Instead, the object acts as a kind of mirror.
Depending on the shape of the object and the wavelength of the incident
wave, energy scatters off it in various directions in complicated patterns.
Good estimates of the scattered electromagnetic field are needed for many
applications:
- to work out the size of radar echoes for different targets;
- to find the best place to install an antenna on a vehicle;
- to look at the effects of buildings and other obstacles on radio
signals in cities.
It is extremely difficult to solve Maxwell's equations for objects that
are larger than a few wavelengths. Therefore, it is virtually impossible
to solve Maxwell's equations directly for any of the situations listed
above. RCRU has developed novel "solution marching" methods that work
for large objects in these situations, including the current marching
technique or CMT. CMT solves scattering problems by computing the solution
to an integral equation describing the magnetic current over and over
again.
This project aims to improve the CMT method so that it can be used for
larger problems, such as the scattering of mm waves by buildings, but
without losing accuracy. The team also hopes to improve the efficiency
of the method so that it can run easily on a desktop computer.
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