Loop star basis functions and a robust preconditioner for EFIE scattering problems

An electric field integral equation (EFIE) formulation using the loop-star basis functions has been developed for modeling plane wave scattering from perfect conducting objects. A stability analysis at the DC limit shows that the use of the RaoWilton-Glisson (RWG) basis functions results in a singular matrix operator. However, the use of the loop-star basis functions results in a well-conditioned matrix. Moreover, a preconditioner constructed from a two-step process, based on near interactions and an incomplete factorization with a heuristic drop strategy, has been proposed in conjunction with the conjugate gradient method to solve the resulting matrix equation. The approach is shown to be effective for resolving both the low frequency instability and the bad conditioning of the EFIE method. The computational complexity of the proposed approach is shown to be O(N/sup 2/).