Surface wave-space wave diffraction mechanisms at the edge of joined planar screens

The planar junction between two panels with different electromagnetic characteristics is a useful canonical problem at high frequency for a wide variety of actual configurations. First, uniform high-frequency closed form expressions are given for the case of the impedance planar junctions, which account for surface wave (SW)-space wave diffraction phenomena. Next, a heuristic extension is presented to treat the case of joined planar dielectric panels, that may be either penetrable or coated. In particular, the solution is explicitly developed for the case of an incident plane wave and observation at a finite distance. The field is represented as the sum of the geometrical optics (GO) field, a space wave diffracted field, and a contribution associated with the surface wave-space wave diffraction mechanism at the junction. Finally, the heuristically modified 2D solution is introduced into a rigorous 2D-3D transformation machinery. Thus, it is found that the final 3D expressions satisfy the boundary conditions at the dominant asymptotic order.