A new approach to electromagnetic wave diffraction by a plane with an impedance discontinuity

In this paper, an analytical method is used to formulate the problem of plane wave diffraction by a plane with an impedance discontinuity. This approach is essentially based on two main ingredients: the decomposition of electromagnetic fields, which express the field vector as (E_u, H_u) and (E_l, H_l), and the introduction of equivalent electric (magnetic) currents adopted for convenience. The fields (E_u, H_u) are expressed in terms of the form for a plane wave diffracted by a continuous constant-impedance plane, and the (E_u, H_u) given by the equivalent source, can be cast into an integral of the Hankel function with the special variables. The present method, in principle, can be extended to obtain the corresponding results for the arbitrary incident waves (e.g. the fields of dipole excitation).