Electromagnetic Scattering From A Cavity In A Ground Plane

The electromagnetic scattering from an arbitrarily shaped open cavity embedded in a perfectly conducting, infinite ground plane is examined. The cavity is filled with a linear, isotropic, homogeneous material. The fields in the cavity interior and above the ground plane are expressed in terms of the tangential fields on the cavity surface and aperture. A coupled set of three integral equations is developed governing the tangential fields on the aperture and cavity surface. The support of the unknown tangential fields is finite. A moment-method based algorithm to approximate the solution to the integral equations for axisymmetric geometries is developed. The unknown tangential fields are expanded using piecewise-linear functions in the elevation plane and complex exponentials in the azimuth plane. Orthogonality is exploited to reduce the size of the matrix. The algorithm yields a well-conditioned numerical solution. The solution obeys the edge condition at the aperture rim. The integral equations are uniquely solvable at frequencies where other integral equation-based techniques admit spurious solutions. Radar cross section calculations are compared to experimental measurements of full-scale physical models. Results show that an open cavity can serve as an effective radar cross section enhancement device.