EM programmer´s notebook

This issue´s EM programmer´s column includes two contributions. The first contribution is by Woo, et al., and is Part I of a survey of grid/mesh generators for partial-differential equation solutions. This survey is intended to provide the community with a list of available grid generators. There is no attempt to give an evaluation of the listed software, other than that provided by the holders of the software. The second paper, by Michael Schuh and Alex Woo, presents an interesting and extremely simple method for generating an entire 360-degree monostatic radar cross section (RCS) pattern, from a few bistatic RCS data. As we know, bistatic data are cheap to generate, because there is no need to redo the solution of the integral or wave equation. Only the radiation-integral evaluation must be repeated, for each bistatic angle. For many targets, the backscatter RCS can be approximated rather well from specular bistatic data, even when the angular separation between the incidence and scattering directions is 5 degrees apart. Schuh and Woo describe how this observation is exploited, to reduce the monostatic-pattern computation by a factor of 10 or so.<>