3-D Scattering From a PEC Target Buried Beneath a Dielectric Rough Surface: An Efficient PILE-ACA Algorithm for Solving a Hybrid KA-EFIE Formulation

Abstract

An efficient hybrid KA-EFIE formulation is deployed to analyze the electromagnetic (EM) scattering from a 3-D perfectly electric conducting (PEC) object buried beneath a 2-D dielectric rough surface. In this approach, the electric and magnetic current densities on the rough surface are analytically obtained through the current-based Kirchhoff approximation (KA), whereas the electric current density on the buried object is rigorously determined by solving the electric field integral equation (EFIE) using the Galerkin’s method of moments (MoM) with Rao–Wilton–Glisson (RWG) basis functions. The KA-EFIE matrix system is then efficiently solved by the iterative propagation-inside-layer-expansion (PILE) method combined with the algebraic adaptive cross approximation (ACA). The current densities on the dielectric rough surface are thereafter used to handle the bistatic normalized radar cross-section (NRCS) patterns. The proposed hybrid approach allows a significant reduction in computation time and memory requirements compared to the rigorous Poggio–Miller–Chang–Harrington–Wu (PMCHW)-EFIE formulation which requires solving a large MoM matrix equation. Moreover, the hybridization of the ACA algorithm with the PILE method improves further the computational cost thanks to the rank-deficient propriety of the coupling matrices. To validate the hybrid approach, we compare its results with those of the rigorous PMCHW-EFIE approach.