Modeling the physical optics currents in a hybrid moment-method-physical-optics code

This paper shows a comparison between several procedures to represent the Physical Optics (PO) current density into a hybrid Moment-Method-Physical-Optics (NIM-PO) code. Some numerical results demonstrate that a set of basis functions suitable for the Method of Moments (MM) may be inappropriate to model the PO currents. A new evaluation of the PO operator is proposed. The radiation can be analytically determined and, since it includes a linear interpolation of the phase, it can be applied over large triangular domains. This allows a drastic reduction of the computational cost, maintaining or even improving the level of accuracy.