ON THE MULTIPLATEN Z-BUFFER ALGORITHM FOR RAY TRACING IN HIGH-FREQUENCY ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING COMPUTATIONS

A ray tracer based on the multiplaten Z-buffer (MPZ) algorithm is implemented and its performance is evaluated against the binary space-partition tree algorithm. Our results indicate that the computational complexity of the MPZ is independent of the number of facets, thus making it potentially attractive for targets described by a large number of facets. A multi-aspect MPZ (MAMPZ) is also proposed to further enhance the speed performance of the MPZ algorithm. It is shown that by storing multi-aspect Z-buffers, it is possible to significantly accelerate the ray-tracing time of the MPZ. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 43: 298–301, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20450