A hybrid finite element-boundary integral method for the analysis of cavity-backed antennas of arbitrary shape

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Abstract
An edge-based hybrid finite element-boundary integral (FE-BI) formulation using tetrahedral elements is described for scattering and radiation analysis of arbitrarily shaped cavity-backed patch antennas. By virtue of the finite element method (FEM), the cavity irregularities, the dielectric super/substrate inhomogeneities, and the diverse excitation schemes inside the cavity may be readily modeled when tetrahedral elements are used to discretize the cavity. On the aperture, the volume mesh reduces to a triangular grid allowing the modeling of nonrectangular patches. Without special handling of the boundary integral system, this formulation is typically applicable to cavity-backed antenna systems with moderate aperture size. To retain an O(N) memory requirement, storage of the full matrix due to the boundary integral equation is avoided by resorting to a structured triangular aperture grid and taking advantage of the integral's convolutional property. If necessary, this is achieved by overlaying a structured triangular grid on the unstructured triangular grid and relating the edge field coefficients between the two grids via two narrow banded transformation matrices. The combined linear system of equations is solved via the biconjugate gradient (BICG) method, and the FFT algorithm is incorporated to compute the matrix-vector product efficiently, with minimal storage requirements.