Electromagnetic scattering by thin dielectric sheets using integral equation techniques

We present a volume integral equation formulation to analyze a thin dielectric sheet without a conductor backing. The integral equation uses both tangential and normal polarization currents to model the material, where the normal component is assumed to be constant across the thickness of the material. The currents are reexpressed in terms of the electric flux density because it has a continuous normal component across material discontinuities. The presented integral equation approach hinges on the accurate evaluation of the potential integrals involved. An integration scheme has been presented that accurately and efficiently handles both singular and near-singular terms for 2D and 3D subdomain geometries (Wilton, D.R. and Khayat, M. A., IEEE AP-S Int. Symp. and URSI Radio Science Meeting, 2003; Khayat and Wilton, Int. Conf. on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications, 2003; URSI National Radio Science Meeting, 2004). The radar cross section is calculated for a thin dielectric sheet and found to be in good agreement with the literature for incident field polarization which is transverse electric (TE) or transverse magnetic (TM) to the sheet.