Interactive visualization of electromagnetic fields

It is clear that electrical engineering students need a working knowledge of the basic concepts of electromagnetics, because of the increased speed of digital circuits and computers and more emphasis on electronic communications. However, student learning of basic and advanced electromagnetics is difficult because the fundamental quantities are based on abstract mathematics describing fields and waves which are hard to visualize. The purpose of this paper is to enhance instruction in fields and waves courses through the use of computer graphics for visualization of real world electromagnetic problems in near real time using personal computers. Two software packages are developed by the authors for educational as well as research purposes. The first deals with antennas and antenna arrays, while the second provides an efficient solution for the scattering from composite scatterers using geometrical simulation for the original scatterer. Both packages provides interactive graphical illustrations in two and three dimensions.<>