An iterative method for calculating the shielding effectiveness and light transmittance of multilayered media

A simple, rapid, and accurate numerical method is presented for calculating the shielding effectiveness and the light transmittance of multilayered media. A uniform treatment is used to obtain the shielding effectiveness of the layers at microwave frequencies and their light transmittance at optical frequencies. The method is completely general and does not involve any approximation. It can be applied at any frequency, for vertical or oblique incidence, to lossless or lossy, isotropic or anisotropic media consisting of any number of dielectric and metallic layers. In order to illustrate the versatility of the method, the shielding effectiveness and the light transmittance of two different structures consisting of a gold film deposited over a plastic substrate and of a plastic substrate sandwiched between two gold films are analyzed under different conditions