Fast Analysis of the Electromagnetic Scattering of Targets Coated With Plasma Sheath Based on IBC

A novel method [physical optics (PO) method com- bined with impedance boundary conditions (IBC)] is proposed to fast analyze the scattering from electrically large targets coated with plasma sheath. This letter derives the formulas of the proposed PO method. The inhomogeneous plasma sheath can be equivalent to a multilayer plasma layer with uniform distribution. Monostatic radar cross section (RCS) values of targets in this letter calculated by the proposed PO method are in consistent with that calculated by the method of moments (MoM) and PO of FEKO software. The effects of different plasma thicknesses, different electron density and different collision frequencies on the scattering of the cone model coated with plasma are analyzed. Moreover, the RCS of the space shuttle-like model calculated by the proposed PO method has good symmetrical characteristic in the plane of
${\boldsymbol{\theta }} = 90 $
$^\circ $
. Compared to commercial electromagnetic software FEKO, the computational efficiency of the proposed PO method is improved and the calculation costs are reduced.