ABSTRACTWe investigate techniques for solving the wave equation which are based on the idea of obtaining exact local solutions within each potential cell, which are then joined to form a global solution. We derive full potential multiple scattering theory (MST) from the Lippmann-Schwinger equation and show that it as well as a closely related cellular method are techniques of this type. This cellular method appears to have all of the advantages of MST and the added advantage of having a secular matrix with only nearest neighbor interactions. Since this cellular method is easily linearized one can rigorously reduce electronic structure calculations to the problem of solving a nearest neighbor tight-binding problem.