Edge diffraction in the vicinity of the tip of a composite wedge

The electromagnetic field due to a line source radiating in the presence of a two-dimensional composite wedge composed of a number of conducting and dielectric materials is obtained. The Fourier transform path integral method (FTPI) is described and used to perform the numerical analysis. An important feature of the FTPI method is that it is based on a global solution to the Helmholtz scalar wave equation. As such the method avoids numerical enforcement of boundary conditions and the necessity of reformulating the analytical/numerical equations for each geometric configuration. The total scattered field is presented for several cases where one of the dielectric wedge sections is lossy, including examples of microwave scattering from a crested ocean surface and an air-ocean-sea ice interface. >