Surface currents on conducting plates with multiple apertures

The surface current distribution on a conductive scatterer gives an insight into the dominant scattering mechanisms by defining regions that contribute the most to the backscattered radar cross section. A map of the surface current density identifies the "hot spots" of current on the scatterer. It could help one establish where to place antennas to achieve minimal interference from the scatterer to the antenna. The paper discusses the characteristics of the surface currents induced by a plane wave incident on a plate with multiple apertures. The moment method surface patch formulation is used to compute the surface current density for a solid plate, plates with widely-spaced apertures, and plates with closely-spaced apertures. The effects of the aperture separation and incident wave polarization on the currents are discussed. Surface current maps determined by the method of moments (MoM) are compared with surface currents computed by the physical optics (PO) approximation. These comparisons are used to explain the difference between the MoM and PO predicted RCS results.<>