A higher-order method for electromagnetic simulation of conducting objects near/across the interface of a half space

A set of higher-order basis functions based on curvilinear triangular patches is presented to analyze the electromagnetic scattering from arbitrarily shaped, perfect electric conducting objects in a half space. With this technique, the number of unknowns as well as the number of field-source interactions are significantly reduced compared with traditional low-order discretization scheme. Due to the hierarchical property of this method, a uniform mesh can be used for objects that may occupy both background layers with distinct contrast in wavelength. Moreover, For wide-band half-space applications, only one set of coarse mesh generated at the lowest frequency end is needed. Numerical results show that this higher-order method significantly reduces memory requirements and saves much labor in geometrical modeling for general half-space problems.