Scattering From Axisymmetric Dielectric Scatterers: A Hybrid Method of Solving the Surface Integral Equations

Scattering of EM waves from homogeneous dielectric scatterers is formulated in terms of two surface integral equations, for the components of the total electric and magnetic fields that are tangential to the surface of the scatterer. Two equivalent systems of such equations may be used, corresponding to the two types of Maue´s integral equations for perfectly conducting scatterers. The appearance of surface divergence terms of both components in the dielectric case, in addition to the unknowns themselves, causes serious complications when the method of solution is based on some kind of division of the scatterer surface into patches; these complications become particularly apparent in the process of evaluating the locally dominant self-patch contribution to the surface integrals. They can be effectively avoided if a third equivalent system of surface integral equations is used, arising from a proper summation of the original two systems; then, the two singular Green functions that appear in the surface divergence terms are replaced by their non-singular difference and this, followed by a further transformation of these critical terms, results in the complete elimination of the surface divergence terms. The self-patch contribution can then be evaluated analytically and this helps reduce the size of the matrix, via which the values of the tangential field components at the patch centers are calculated. Scatterers of considerable electrical size, for instance spheres with ka of the order of 10 or 15, can then be treated with moderate size matrices. Numerical results for spheres, sphere-cone-spheres and other shapes are obtained and compared with results from other methods. Apart from spheres, results for other shapes are very rare and limited to small sizes in the literature.