Study of the convergence of volume integral equation method

To solve the electromagnetic scattering from material objects of arbitrary geometry, a volume integral equation (VIE) formulation is developed. It is shown that perfect conductors can be treated as dielectrics by letting their permittivity approach infinity. In this method, the polarization current is defined by using the equivalence theorem and solved by a moment method. To date the method has been successfully used to solve a number of scattering problems, but its convergence has not been studied carefully. This paper addresses this issue and examines the convergence for both dielectric and conductor problems.