Shooting and bouncing rays


The shooting and bouncing rays method in computational electromagnetics was first developed for computation of radar cross section. Since then, the method has been generalized to be used also for installed antenna performance. The SBR method is an approximate method applied to high frequencies. The method can be implemented for GPU computing, which makes the computation very efficient.

Theory

The first step in the SBR method is to use geometrical optics for computing equivalent currents, either on metallic structures or on an exit aperture. The scattered field is thereafter computed by integrating these currents using physical optics, by the Kirchhoff's diffraction formula. The current on a perfect electrical conductor is related to the incident magnetic field by. This approximation
holds best for short wavelengths, and it assumes that the radius of curvature of the scatterer is large compared to the wavelength.

Extending SBR for edge diffraction

Since the approximation described above assumes that the radius of curvature is large compared to the wavelength, the diffraction from edges needs to be handled separately. The SBR method can be extended with physical theory of diffraction in order include edge diffraction in the model.

Implementation in commercial software

The SBR method is implemented in the following commercial codes: