A generalized expansion for radiated and scattered fields

At a given frequency every perfectly conducting obstacle has associated with it a particular set of surface currents and corresponding radiated fields which are characteristic of the obstacle shape and independent of any specific excitation. These characteristic modes form a useful basis set in which to expand fields radiated or scattered at a great distance from the obstacle. Once these modes are known for a given obstacle, the scattering of plane waves incident from arbitrary source directions into arbitrary receiver directions may be evaluated concisely. To support the theory, a method is described for determining characteristic mode currents on thin wires of general shape and is applied to several shapes to generate certain backscattering and input admittance data. Wherever possible comparison is made with existing data.