A goal-oriented hp-adaptive finite element approach to radar scattering problems Original Research Article

The paper presents application of an hp-adaptive finite element method for scattering of electromagnetic waves. The main objective of the numerical analysis is to determine the characteristics of the scattered waves indicating the power being scattered at a given direction––i.e. the radar cross-section (RCS). This is achieved considering the scattered far-field which defines RCS and which is expressed as a linear functional of the solution. Techniques of error estimation for the far-field are considered and an h-adaptive strategy leading to the fast reduction of the error of the far-field is presented. The simulations are performed with a three-dimensional version of an hp-adaptive finite element method for electromagnetics based on the hexahedral edge elements combined with infinite elements for modeling the unbounded space surrounding the scattering object.