Spectral element method-based parabolic equation for EM-scattering problems

Abstract

The traditional parabolic equation (PE) method is based on the finite difference (FD) scheme. However, the scattering object cannot be well approximated for complex geometries. As a result, a large number of meshes are needed to discretize the complex scattering objects. In this paper, the spectral element method is introduced to better approximate the complex geometry in each transverse plane, while the FD scheme is used along the paraxial direction. This proposed algorithm begins with expanding the reduced scattered fields with the Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre polynomials and testing them by the Galerkin’s method in each transverse plane. Then, the calculation can be taken plane by plane along the paraxial direction. Numerical results demonstrate that the accuracy can be improved by the proposed method with larger meshes when compared with the traditional PE method.