Formulation and computational efficiency of reduced surface coupled integral equations for electromagnetic wave scattering

Electromagnetic wave scattering from and penetration into layered bodies are usually analysed by using coupled surface integral equations associated with all the interfaces between their homogeneous layers. In this paper, a procedure is proposed where the global system of integral equations is reduced to a system only containing the unknowns relative to one interface, with the unknowns for the other interfaces being obtained by recursion. This yields a substantially more efficient numerical computation as compared with available computation techniques based on coupled integral equations.