Hierarchical Bases for Nonhierarchic 3-D Triangular Meshes

We describe a novel basis of hierarchical, multiscale functions that are linear combinations of standard Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) functions. When the basis is used for discretizing the electric field integral equation (EFIE) for PEC objects it gives rise to a linear system immune from low-frequency breakdown, and well conditioned for dense meshes. The proposed scheme can be applied to any mesh with triangular facets, and therefore it can be used as if it were an algebraic preconditioner. The properties of the new system are confirmed by numerical results that show fast convergence rates of iterative solvers, significantly better than those for the loop-tree basis. As a byproduct of the basis generation, a generalization of the RWG functions to nonsimplex cells is introduced.