General entire-domain Galerkin method for analysis of wire antennas in the presence of dielectric bodies

A novel, entire-domain moment-method is proposed for the analysis of wire antennas and scatterers in the presence of lossy inhomogeneous dielectric bodies of finite extent. The wire part of the structure is approximated by arbitrarily positioned and interconnected straight-wire segments of lengths which can exceed one wavelength. The dielectric bodies are approximated by a system of trilinear hexahedrons, which can be electrically large (can also exceed one wavelength inside the dielectric, in any direction). The current along wires and inside dielectric bodies is approximated by one- and three-dimensional polynomials, respectively. The unknown current-distribution coefficients are obtained by a Galerkin-type solution of the system of coupled two-potential integral equations. The method is accurate, efficient and reliable. Its fundamental advantage over the (only existing) subdomain methods for the analysis of the same type of structures is a significantly reduced number of unknowns (as a rule, for an order of magnitude) and, consequently, greatly reduced computing time. The proposed method enables rapid analysis of wire/dielectric structures exceeding moderate electrical size with even standard personal computers.