Hybridization of Multilevel Fast Multipole Method and Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction for Radiation and Scattering Computations

Abstract

Numerical computations of electromagnetic radiation and scattering problems for arbitrarily shaped and electrically large objects in the same environment are preferably performed by combining the method of moments (MoM) with the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction (UTD). Composite metallic/dielectric objects with arbitrary shape are handled efficiently with the finite element boundary integral (FEBI) method. For large scale problems, the MoM solution is accelerated by the multilevel level fast multipole method (MLFMM). On the other hand, electrically large objects with relatively simple shape are treated sufficiently with ray-based high-frequency methods, like geometrical optics (GO) and UTD. However, until now MoM-UTD hybrid approaches have been restricted to conventional MoM formulations with only the electric field integral equation (EFIE), resulting in limited modeling capabilities. The same restrictions also exist in the hybrid FEBI-UTD method. The paper presents MLFMM-UTD hybridization for the combined field integral equation (CFIE), in order to extend further the applicability of the FEBI-UTD method. The resulting modeling technique is referred to as the FEBI-MLFMM-UTD method. The MLFMM-UTD hybridization is performed in the translation procedure on the various MLFMM levels, by taking into account additional contributions received at the testing groups due to UTD objects. Due to different ray directions for outgoing and incoming waves, appropriate interpolation and anterpolation procedures must be applied to consider the UTD contributions.