Surface wave and related effects on the RCS of microstrip dipoles printed on magnetodielectric substrates

The scattering cross section of microstrip dipoles is examined. The primary emphasis is to demonstrate the effects of surface waves on the scattering cross section, and to provide a simple physical understanding of the surface wave mechanism. The electric field integral equation is solved in the spatial domain using the method of moments. Special techniques used to speed up the evaluation of the Sommerfeld integrals are explained. The radar cross section for several microstrip dipole configurations is presented. The mechanism for generation of surface waves plays a major role in the scattering behavior of the dipoles, and a physically intuitive interpretation of this mechanism is used to successfully explain the pattern structure. For generality, magnetodielectric substrates with and without loss are considered.<>