PDE techniques for solving the problem of radar scattering by a body of revolution

The authors discuss two partial differential equation (PDE) techniques, namely the finite difference (FD) method and the finite element method (FEM), for solving the problem of radar scattering by a body of revolution (BOR). The formulation of the BOR problem is based upon the use of the coupled azimuthal potentials (CAPs), introduced by M.A. Morgan et al. (1977), that allow one to reduce the vector field problem to the solution of two coupled scalar wave equations. An approach to FD/FEM mesh truncation is developed on the basis of a multipole representation for the CAPs in the asymptotic region. Numerical results are presented for some representative geometries to illustrate the application of the PDE methods and some observations regarding the comparative performance of the two methods are included.>